A Scholar's travels with a Witcher

by Spike368

Sent out to gather the knowledge of the real world. A young scholar from the University of Oxenfurt finds a wounded Witcher on the steps to the inn where he was staying. So he starts gathering the material for his journals. Rated T for language I will be publishing this story on Royal Road /profile/349358

159. Chapter 159

(A/N: Description of a very brutal death for possibly ceremonial reasons)

"I need the three of you to listen to me very carefully."

Our guide into the heart of the forest was a dryad named Oak-Leaf. She was a big woman, taking a lot after Blonde-Giant but was dark-haired instead of blonde as well as being a bit older. She was not unfriendly towards the three of us but was clearly a lady who had job to do and wasn't really interested in anything outside that job.

"I know that you have some expertise in fighting and dealing with monsters. You, especially you, Witcher. I know who your companions are and I know what they are capable of. But make no mistake, the things that you are dealing with over the next few days as we travel into the heart of the forest will be like nothing that you've ever seen before.

"And that is a lie. It is important that you know that that is a lie. I know that you, Witcher, had to deal with an Arachas that had escaped from the heart of the Forest and it will have behaved something like every other Arachas that you have ever seen, dealt with or heard of. But now it will be different."

Kerrass nodded to that.

"Going into the heart of the forest will not be like that. You will see Arachas walking along next to us. You will see Echinopsae bowing to greet us and you will see bears and wolves living alongside foxes and rabbits. The coming Equinox is moving from Winter into Summer which means that things will be lightening up. Believe me, you would not want to be making this journey during the Winter Solstice or the Autumn Equinox. One is death and the other is decay whereas this one is about birth and new life.

"Be grateful for that.

"But that is not to say that the coming journey is completely free of danger. Quite the opposite. The danger is that if you threaten, or are seem to threaten any of that new life, then that new life will be defended accordingly. Things can go from the metaphorical cute and cuddly to slathering and dangerous between blinking.

"So make no assumptions. If I, or any of my scouts, tell you to do something or not to do something. Then we expect to be obeyed instantly and without question. this is for our safety as much as it is or yours and believe me, we will not compromise our safety when it comes to making this journey. If it comes down to it and it is a choice between the safety of one of my scouts, or myself, and delivering the three of you down to the heart of the forest, I will not hesitate, not even for a second, before I will order you filled full of arrows and being left for those animals that are down here, to eat what is left of your corpse.

"You will see things down here that will look to you like monsters that you have heard stories about. If they attack, defend yourselves by all means and fighting an Arachas, an Endrega or an Echinopsae down here is exactly the same as it would be up in the real world. The difference is that their motivations are different. They will not behave the same. And that is the thing to bear in mind. So watch your aggression, and be careful of your body language. If a fight starts, and it might, defend yourself as your Witcher training tells you to, or in the way that you are told to by others.

"Specifically, if a crow lands on a nearby branch to look at you. Do not spook it. That is the Schattenmann watching you. If a wolf walks up to you and sniffs you, that is the Schattenmann testing you out. Keep your weapons in their sheathes and we should have no problem. But if you can't do that, then I will tie you up and drag you to the Schattenmann. If you make that difficult. Then your throat will be slit and I will leave you where you fall."

Nothing like a good speech from a guide who is taking you into dangerous places in order to set the mood.

"There are some more practical points." She went on. "I don't care what kind of reception you had back in the settlement, but believe me when I say that I don't care. I choose the scouts that help me take people like you into the heart of the forest. Therefore, there will be no fraternisation between you and them. They will not offer and you will not pursue it. You might have the impression that dryads go that way reflexively. But believe me, this is not the case here. If one of my scouts decides to cut your balls off in order to make a point, then that is just the way things go.

"You will help us stand watches. There are three of you. It should only take us three or four days to get down to the heart of the forest depending on how the journey goes. So each one of you will take an early, middle and late watch and then should we run over, then we will figure that out accordingly.

"I expect you to arrange your own camp. Food will be brought to you and you will eat the food and drink the drink that we bring to you. This food and drink are carefully measured out in order to help you make the journey. Eating too much, or too little, will endanger the group. I don't care if it tastes bad or if you don't like it. Eat the damn food, or otherwise risk being left behind when you start to weaken.

"You will also be brought some herbs that we expect you to rub under your armpits and around your groin areas in order to suppress natural scents. Do not stint on these and again, we expect you to act as ordered. It obscures your scent from certain kinds of monsters that are out there, the attentions of which, we do not want to attract. Keep noise to a minimum. Speak only in low voices and only when absolutely necessary. Unchecked laughter can risk lives and I won't have it."

Kerrass literally raised his hands to ask a question. I nearly cried with laughter. I didn't, I had enough sense to see that it would have been inappropriate. But it was close.

"Yes?"

"What about involuntary noises?" Kerrass asked. "Freddie here has nightmares and he claims that I snore."

"Then I hope that the pair of you share a bedroll so that you can wake each other up in order to prevent disaster."

Kerrass just raised an eyebrow at that, but we said nothing.

"Relieve yourselves a small distance from the camp. Each of you will be given a small shovel with which you will dig yourself holes to squat over. Any leaves and things that you use to clean yourselves with should be deposited in the hole along with your leavings. We are some distance from the drinking water streams so there is no danger of cross-contamination. Urine should be covered with a layer of forest debris, the type that can be done by kicking a boot over it so don't trouble about that too much.

"When you do go to relieve yourselves. Do not go alone. Two people go so that one can stand a lookout while the other is squatting. The things down here that might hunt you, recognise the relieving of oneself as a time of weakness, do not allow them to take you by carelessness."

She took a moment to look each of us in the eye.

"I do not exaggerate." She said. "The things that I say will save your lives. And I would much rather you say of me 'She was very strict with us and her precautions seem pointless' rather than 'if only she had been more strict with her orders and then more of us might have survived'. I have been making this journey since before all of you were born and I am well-practised with it. But even my safety record is not perfect. However, almost universally, the people that have died were the ones that failed to listen."

I liked her.

I volunteered for the middle watch on the first night. The middle watch is traditionally my least favourite watch as I never feel as though I manage to get a proper night's sleep and I wanted to get it out of the way. It was not the best idea that I've ever had but it was not the worst either. I might have been better off going with taking the first watch so that I could let all of the events move through my brain as it was.

That opening part of the journey was not too bad. It turned out that the dryad settlement, (note that it didn't have a name. It was just "the settlement) was on some kind of plateau so as we descended, it was quite a sharp drop. My newfound sense of vertigo in these kinds of situations did not help my sense of safety or wellbeing. We were climbing down rope ladders and following steep, zig-zagging paths. Experienced climbers have often told me that climbing down is much harder than climbing up and this was the proof of that statement that I had not been looking for. Once we had reached the base of the cliff, the goods that had been lowered on ropes, were divided amongst us and we started moving down into the depths of the forest itself. We took our time, and the march leader set a slow and steady pace.

Other than our personal belongings, we carried nothing else. There were no food supplies or water skins to divide between us which seemed to be divided among the dryads that came with us. There were about a dozen of them, all told. Six scouts and six guards. As I think I said last time, we were being escorted, not guarded. Not really anyway. I have no doubt that if we tried to make a run for it then we would soon find an arrow or a spear in our back for the danger of it. I had no intention of doing so but I did wonder at the lack of supplies.

We would stop every so often and a guard would walk down the line with a waterskin wrapped around her before she would pour the three of us a cup of water each and demand that we drink it. There were herbal, fruity tastes to that water although I could not recognise them.

It was clear that Stefan wanted to refuse and, indeed, wanted to carry his own water but one of the dryads just raised her eyebrows at him.

"Can we not carry our own water?" He asked.

"No." She said.

"I was taught not to trust water handed from…"

"Fine," She snapped. "Don't drink the water. I will have yours and when you collapse from dehydration we will divide your things between us. I quite fancy your sword myself. The armour will be smelted down for arrowheads. Good metal is a rarity."

He was already drinking the water.

Lunch that day was a fruity, sweet oatcake. It was not very large, about the size of my palm, but I was promised that it would last me the rest of the day and keep my energy levels up. It did too.

We came to a stop much earlier than I was expecting us to. It wasn't more than a couple of hours after we had stopped for lunch. To me, we seemed to come around a corner and we were in the middle of a large… fortification. It was like an outpost, the ruins of which still litter the countryside in Velen. It seemed like… even though this place was not a proper settlement, it was enclosed. There was a small wooden palisade wall and a watchtower. There were three dryads waiting for us. Two scouts and lookouts standing with spears and bows waiting at the gate as we walked in. And there was an attendant who didn't speak to us. When we got in through the gate it became clear that this was a permanent structure, almost a military camp. There were easily another couple of dozen dryads here moving around and performing small chores.

Our guide, Oak-Leaf spent some time taking a report from the others that were there while the guards and scouts that had come with us left a large amount of the supplies that we had brought with us at the fort before making camp themselves or moving off to various pre-arranged stations. It all had the feeling of a well-practised manoeuvre that had been performed many times.

Then Oak-Leaf gave us her speech. It sounded like she had given that speech many times but even then, she did not sound bored with it.

As I had predicted though, I did not sleep well that night. There were still thoughts of Chestnut-Shell and Apple-Seed in my mind, which upsettingly mixed together with thoughts of Ariadne in ways that made me feel more than a little bit uncomfortable. Also, a new feeling that I did not recognise seemed to come out of nowhere and it took me a, not small, among of time to figure out what the problem was.

I felt guilty. Not for the real or imagined betrayal of Ariadne although that was certainly there. But for leaving my daughters behind. I was a Father now. But far from being a matter of joy and warmth, it was a thing of guilt and unhappiness. I had no idea what was waiting for me at the end of this trek into the depths of the Black Forest, but at the end of it, would I even remember that I had two children waiting for me in the depths of that place? That thought was somehow worse. That I might forget? I didn't like that.

It was one of those, not particularly restful things, my first patch of sleep, where I only know that I slept because a dryad shook me awake and bid me go and take my watch. It felt more of a perfunctory thing though, something as I was doing for the demonstration of the matter as all I could do was stand there in the darkness, looking out at… well, nothing. I could hear a lot though. Kerrass' indistinct snoring, occasionally sputtering as someone woke him up and bid him change his position. I could hear the movements of the other guards and the occasional shifting of weight.

I decided to focus on that and I could slowly start to parse out the other noises that were in the trees. I could hear the sounds of the other guards, pacing, the sounds of the watch leader walking around and checking to make sure that none of the sentries had been picked off by an unseen enemy or had fallen asleep on the watch. I could hear the small pieces of conversation that drifted toward me as she did so. I could hear the occasional movements of the people around me.

It is all but impossible to keep perfectly still. Ariadne can do it but she doesn't need to do boring mortal things like breathing. I mean, she does but not as often as you or I do. Kerrass can do it as well but he has to take a potion to do it. But people breathe, they swallow saliva or move their mouth around when it comes time to wet their dry throat. They might take a small swallow of water or take something out to suck on.

Apparently, I sometimes mutter my thoughts under my breath. I don't do it consciously and it's a recent habit.

But most of that was behind me, in front of me there was much less.

I could hear the wind in the trees far above me.

There was a strange kind of feeling in the heart of the forest. The main canopy of the trees was still far above me but in some way that I didn't understand, there was also a sublayer of trees underneath. The required light, water and warmth seemed to be able to come down through the tallest canopies down into the depths of the forest below so that those trees could grow. As could the bushes and the various piece of undergrowth. The sound of the wind through the trees was almost enough to mesmerize me but there was just the wrong side of there being too much of it which made it intrusive. Two separate layers of forest canopy will do that and as such, focusing on that particular noise, meant that it was overwhelming. It was like hearing the sea in the height of a storm if there was also no wind echoing in your ears.

Slowly, very slowly, I pushed that sound aside to see if I could hear anything else. I couldn't see anything but I was supposed to be a lookout in some way. Therefore, if I couldn't see, I would try to hear.

I focused my listening and shut other things away. I tried to pick out other things. Things that could not be dismissed as the sounds of movement behind me or the sounds of wind blowing through the trees.

I heard some birds far off but that meant nothing to me. It was the hooting of some kind of hunting owl. As I say, it was a long way off and probably didn't mean anything. My father was a hunter and although he preferred to hunt with hounds, he was fond of falconry and we had kept considerable… roost I think it's called. I was never interested in that kind of thing. I can understand hunting as a way to make a living or as a way to put food on the table. But I could never understand how hunting was a sport. Shoot targets if you want to shoot at something. But the use of hounds or birds seemed to be making a big deal of the talents of some other animal or creature other than yourself. Father didn't push the falconry side of things but he insisted that all his children know how to ride and hunt quarry from horseback, something that I have, very occasionally, been grateful to him for. But falconry takes a different kind of interest and I was never interested in that. It always struck me as being oddly cruel to keep a proud bird of prey hooded. I mean, I know why they do it and I know why it's necessary, but it always struck me as being cruel.

And as for those people that wear hunting falcons in public as some kind of fashion accessory… well…

Gradually though, I started to hear something else.

Something was moving through the undergrowth nearby. I could hear the sounds of leaves and branches being moved against the overall sounds of the wind. Other things started to occur. I have no idea how much of this was true or whether it was something to do with the imagination filling in gaps that don't exist. I started to feel as though I could hear the expulsion of air being pushed out of huge nostrils. I could feel the ground shake beneath enormous feet and more noise came, a nose, snuffling at the ground in the direction from which we had come.

The imagination can do strange and horrible things to a man. A side effect of travelling with Kerrass for so long means that, barring things that have come through the portals after the most recent conjunction of Spheres that was mostly averted by the Empress in Skellige. I am well aware of most of the things that can walk, crawl or fly around on the face of the continent.

And those things that came through most recently, like the Yuki-Onna and the increased number of Ice-Giants, are mostly focused on having some kind of cold effect.

There was none of that here. If anything, it was a relatively warm night. Several layers of Forest canopy will do that, protecting you from the cold and leaving you feeling relatively warm. So I knew that it couldn't be a Golem or an Elemental. Nor could it be one of the huge insectoids such as a Kikkimore Queen (we were above ground) or an Endrega Queen. (That was a logical progression. We had seen no signs of eggs let alone damaged ones and the Endrega Queens only come to the surface at the last-ditch attempts to try and protect their nests. Also, the dryads didn't seem to be so foolish as to want to establish a semi-permanent camp next to an Endrega next.) But the thing, whatever it was that was out there, seemed to magnify in my brain. It grew larger and larger and it was clearly after my blood. A Cyclops maybe, or some form of massive…

"Do not be concerned," said a voice next to me. I will not pretend otherwise. I jumped.

The dryad smiled at me. I had not been introduced to this one although she looked faintly familiar to me.

"You did well." She told me. "Not many humans would have been able to spot something moving out in the darkness."

I took a couple of swallows in order to try and calm myself down.

"In all honesty," I admitted, "I could not tell you where the thing was, only that something was out there."

"But knowing that is half the battle." She told me with another gentle smile. "And remember that the first duty of the sentry, even as the monster's jaws close around your head in order to snuff out your life, you must scream. Even if it costs you your life."

"Cheery," I told her and she laughed.

"But true."

"So what is out there?" I wondered.

She tilted her head to one side and listened for a long moment before shrugging.

"Probably a bear." She told me. "Just looking and having a sniff if I am any judge. If there's a bear there will also be wolves with him."

"The bear is male?"

"Oh yes. At this time of year, the female will be off somewhere, guarding the cubs or still working on being pregnant."

"And while we're on the subject, I didn't think that Wolves and Bears hunt together."

"They don't." She told me. "But you are not out there in the world. You are here in the depths of the Black Forest, making your way down into the heart of that Forest and the home of the Schattenmann." She nodded into the night. "The Schattenmann is looking at us, even now. He is deciding whether or not he wants us to survive and let us pass or whether or not he should send his forces to destroy us."

"What will be the thing that tips the balance?"

"Who can say?" There was a smile as she said it. "When you came down here… and by you, I mean all of us. When you come down here, you are placing your lives into the hands of the Schattenmann. If he wants to kill us, he can do so at literally any time. He could send a tide of Endregas that would just wash over us like water. Our little wall would be battered down by bears or uprooted by Leshen. Our eyes would be picked out by Crows. Or just as likely, a swarm of insects would come where one sting means a slow, lingering, agonising death." She drew out those last words with a certain amount of relish.

"Perfect," I said. "Just when I needed more things to keep me awake tonight when I return to my bedroll."

She laughed again and I knew why I recognised her.

"You and Chestnut-Shell are related aren't you?"

"She is my sister." The other woman agreed. "We share a father although our mothers were different. My mother was a warrior, as most are, while Chestnut-Shell's mother was a teacher who approached everything as though it was some kind of lesson to be learned or taught."

"Who was the…"

"He was a young, religious man, a boy really. Maybe seventeen years of age when he came to us. He was part of some kind of religious expedition into the forest to try and do… whatever it was that religious people do. My mother spoke of him fondly and often. Apparently, he wanted to be a priest, or a monk of some kind but was not yet old enough to 'take the vows' whatever that means. She said he was far more clever than his superiors who killed themselves rather than allow themselves to be taken. She also tells me things that no young woman wants to know about their parents such as that he had talent and a young man's enthusiasm and it wasn't long before I was conceived. I have my mother's skills with a bow and spear with my father's attitudes towards spirituality."

"Whereas Chestnut-Shell…?" I prompted.

"She got all the spirituality as well as the desire to educate everyone that she is right and they are wrong." She grinned. "I love my sister and I am overjoyed that she has taken some steps to come out into our society. But we have found that we can only tolerate each other's company for a couple of days at a time before one of us needs an excuse to leave."

I thought of my own family.

"I used to think of my brother like that." I told her. "I love my brother a great deal. But he is smarter than me in almost every way and because he was born first, he has this attitude that he knows more than I do. Which, unfortunately, is often true."

"You are sad as you speak of him."

"He is dying," I told her. "Some kind of progressive disease that we didn't catch when something could be done about it. Now the damage is done and the chances are good that he won't be here this time next year."

"I am sorry." She said. "And your lesson is taken and I am grateful for it. I am also grateful that you made Chestnut-Shell very happy. Even for a short time. I have despaired of that girl for so long but now it looks like she might take the right steps."

"What do you mean?"

"You say your brother is better than you? More intelligent and more…?" She waved her hand around looking for something.

"He is."

"Chestnut-Shell is that to me, made worse by the fact that she is, technically, the younger sister by a month. When she started her training with the teachers and the attendants, it was agreed that she would do great things. That she would change dryad society for the better. It was amusing to those of us who come down into the heart of the forest, that our society said that she would be great and that she would change us and lead us forward into the modern world. And then when she, and others, did start trying to change things. The rest of our society just seemed to ignore her and laugh at her. All the while she is doing exactly what we expected, what we wanted her to do. And now we resent her for doing it. We wanted her to change things and when she tried they all yelled 'NOT LIKE THAT' and she came to resent them back. I don't really blame her.

"We have fought, she and I, many times about the fact that she needs to be part of their world in order to change it. And she would grow angry that she had to meet them halfway when they would refuse to meet her halfway back. I am glad that you have started to change her mind."

"You speak as though the people who work down here are different from other dryads."

"We are different." She said with a smile before straightening up. "Are you asleep?"

"No," I answered with surprise.

"Good, you are obviously not overcome by some enemy, so I must check the next sentry. Good night."

I never saw her again.

I dreamt that night. It was the same recurring dream that I had been having on and off for some time now. I dreamt that I was in a clearing at night, the campfire was burning and there was a feeling of good food, prepared in the open air in my belly. I was nice and warm, comfortable and I felt free. Whatever it was that I felt free from, I do not know but the feeling was there.

I could smell horses and the same smells of grass and leaves that are common when you are travelling through woodland. I could feel my clothes and blankets wrapped around my body and I was just taking a moment to look up at the stars that were clear and twinkling in the night sky above. It was just in that strange feeling that happens, just before you lie down when you are warm, tired and comfortable. The good kind of tiredness that happens after a long day's travel or some hard time spent with friends that you haven't seen in a while.

I could look over and see the space that Kerrass had set aside for himself to be able to sleep, marred only by the fact that he had clearly taken his swords with him. I knew, instinctively that he would be off, training, meditating or gathering the alchemical agents that he needed in order to mix his own potions. I was not concerned about him. I knew somehow that I was safe and well and that there were no monsters in the local area. No beasts either and that the chances of bandits finding me when I was out here was remote.

I felt safe. Which is strange in and of itself. I don't feel safe in my own room in my family's castle anymore, despite being surrounded by the best walls, siege weapons and other fortifications that my father's money can buy. As well as the best-trained soldiers that old Captain Froggart and now Sir Rickard can train. Even then I have to keep my assembled spear next to my bed and my dagger underneath my pillow otherwise I just can't settle down in order to sleep.

There was someone else in the camp. I couldn't tell who it was. Someone sitting on a tree stump, poking at the fire with a stick. A peculiarly male pastime in the presence of fire. Whenever there is a flame, my gender has an almost obsessive need to play with it. Especially when it is an open flame outside. There seems to be an urge in the male to find small bits of grass or twig and throw them into the flame, or to poke it with a stick. It is not uniquely male, but it is much rarer in the female in my experience, who just prefer to sit and watch the flames dancing.

It was definitely a male shape, not Ariadne or any of the other people that I had been travelling with. He was familiar to me although I did not recognise him. He was an older man, hale, fit and healthy in his later years. I would have put him somewhere in his fifties maybe. At that stage where the last vestiges of black hair are about to give in to the onrushing tide of silver and grey in the overall head of hair. He saw me looking at him, looked up and smiled before raising a finger to his lips as if to keep me quiet. He was dressed well, practically and in the cut of a man that can afford to buy the best clothes rather than being forced to choose whatever was convenient.

I woke to feel remarkably refreshed given that the first period of the two periods of sleep that I had had that night had not been the most restful of sleeping patterns.

I rose, ate, and cleaned myself with the provided herbs before readying myself for the day's journey. Much to my astonishment, Kerrass, Stefan and I were all ready long before the dryads were. We gathered, packs on our backs and were waiting next to the exit to the camp. A passing dryad saw us waiting and smiled before moving off onto whatever it was her next chore was. But the other dryads seemed to be taking their time a bit more.

It was almost as if they were dawdling. Doing small, unimportant jobs. Tightening the straps on their own packs. Sharpening spearheads and checking fletchings for arrows, that kind of thing.

I didn't notice what was happening until the fourth dryad stepped out to join the others. Kerrass told me later that one of the dryads had just strapped her pack onto her back before taking up her weapons and just went to stand in the middle of the small fortified camp. She stood perfectly still, gazing slightly up into the canopy of the forest. After a little time, two others joined her which was when I noticed it.

A third stopped whatever chore it was that she was taking care of, just literally set it aside in order for it to be taken up at a later date and then went to join the others. One by one the dryads just stopped what they were doing and all went to stand in this small group of women. As well as our escort of twelve dryads there were another sixteen women there and they all stood together. Some of the women from this camp would be coming with us as well. There was a reason for this, I am sure that someone had told me but for the life of me, I couldn't remember what it was.

They just stood there for a moment. There was no uniformity in the way that they were standing. They weren't in a circle or standing in rows or anything. They just stood there in a group, unmoving.

I looked at Kerrass who was just watching this activity with an expressionless face. Stefan was frowning in some thought.

In total, it lasted less than a minute before, as if on some signal, they all just relaxed and then went about their business. Oak-Leaf came over to us while others were putting their packs on and picking up their weapons.

"Time to go." She told us, "do your best to only tread where the dryad in front of you in the line steps. I hope I don't need to tell any of you gentlemen not to leave the path?"

I thought of Jack and shook my head.

"Good." She said before turning and leading us off and out into the world. That particular leg of the journey was much slower than I was expecting and a much more circuitous route. I am not the best at tracking distance and location but it seemed to me that we could have travelled the same distance in a much smaller amount of time if we had travelled in a straight line to do so.

Of course, I didn't say that. For a start, it was more than possible that my woodcraft skills are not everything that I would like them to be. Years on the road with Kerrass have helped me with this but in order to tell the direction of travel, I need normal things like the Sun, the moon and the stars in order to be able to travel. Recognisable landmarks also help when it comes to this kind of thing. But I was lacking in all of those things and as such, it could have been completely a matter of my imagination that we were moving in an exaggerated snake pattern.

It was far more likely though, that what was really happening was that there were things going on here that I did not understand. But when you are being guided by someone, especially when that someone is going with you and that you have no reason to distrust them, then you do what they tell you and you step where they tell you as well.

Stefan was not having as much fun, he was still struggling to trust these women and as a result, he was grumbling to himself as we moved. Grumbling at the slowness of the pace or at the perceived inefficiency of the route or whatever was going on inside the man's head. I tried really hard to be sympathetic to the man. I tried to remember how obnoxious I had been with questions and grumblings just like Stefan's when I had first begun travelling with Kerrass and I gave him a look of sympathy when one of the dryads turned and hissed an instruction to be quiet at him.

The three of us were spaced out in the route of march. There were scouts on either side of us and then there was a line of warriors and robed attendants. Kerrass was first among the three of us, maybe three back from the front and then there was a warrior between him and Stefan and then another warrior between Stefan and me.

I mostly kept my head down, watching where the woman in front of me put her feet so that I could follow the instructions that I had been given and I took care to place my feet accordingly.

A little ahead of me, given the snaking route, I could see Oak-Leaf leading us. She had a spear and she was prodding the ground occasionally as she moved. It reminded me of the way that you walk across treacherous ground, over snow or through marshes, slowly picking your way overground so that you don't come to some kind of mischief.

It was oddly tiring. Even if we were not moving as quickly as we might have been. I maintain that I would have been more comfortable if we had been going at a swifter pace. But this slow and steady march seemed to make my thighs and calves ache.

The other odd delay was that we would stop often. A signal would be given and then we would just stay where we were. Sometimes someone would come back down the line and dish out a small cup of water to each of us that was taken from a waterskin. It was made clear that we were expected to drink it, regardless of how we felt on the matter.

We were also occasionally given a small piece of the sticky oat cake that, although delicious, left me longing for something savoury to eat at the same time. While we waited, we would watch as Oak-Leaf would consult with one of the other women before picking a direction, seemingly at random.

Once, Kerrass was summoned to the front of the line and his opinion was asked.

Eventually, we came to a clearing and we were told to take a rest and have lunch. Lunch was brought and, much to my delight was indeed a savoury meat sandwich. The fruity oatcakes were delicious, sticky and sweet but sooner or later my body began to long for something meaty and savoury.

As I ate though, I looked up to realise that it was happening again, the dryads ate their rations of food and water before they set aside the wrappings that the food had come in before moving so that they all stood together in the small, open area that we found ourselves in and then they stared off into the same direction, just staring off into space. The last woman to join them was the woman that collected all of the empty food wrappings into a bag, including off the three of us before she tied the top of the bag and moved to join her companions.

"What are they doing?" Stefan asked loudly until Kerrass shushed him and he repeated the question again.

"I would have thought you would have recognised it," Kerrass told him with the false calmness of someone keeping hold of their temper. "They are praying."

"You speak as if this is all some kind of religion to them,"

"Have you not been paying attention?" Kerrass demanded of him and I deliberately looked away so that I would not have to see the temper outburst, justified though it might have been. "Being a dryad is a religion. At least it is here and although I have never been to the Brokilon forest, I am told it is similar there. They can feel the forest about them. This place is a church to them."

"It's not like any kind of religion that I've ever…"

"Then I repeat, you have not been paying attention." Kerrass snapped. A little harsher.

I just stayed out of it. Where I had seemed to gain some patience for Stefan being Stefan, Kerrass seemed to have become less tolerant although I could not immediately tell why. I watched the dryads. I tried to do a couple of pointless things like trying to see if I could tell where they were looking or if they were listening to something. Of course, I couldn't, but it felt as though I should.

As before, there was no signal, there was no celebrant leading the prayers or the meditations or whatever it was they were doing. They just all seemed to… stop and start moving at the same time. And then we were marching.

I'm going to talk about Leshen for a moment and I will explain why the sudden tangent in a little while.

Sometimes, when I am talking with various people that I meet, they ask me a certain set of questions. Some of those questions are really stupid and I let the people know that they are stupid. The ever-popular "Is Ariadne really that attractive?" is a good one and her favourite is "why don't you just sleep with the Vampire?" Don't ask me that one as it tends to make me angry. I feel as though I have kind of explained why that one is the case. But sometimes there are less worrying questions, more normal questions that are a bit more… I don't know really.

But the question that I'm going to talk about today is "What is your favourite monster?"

On the surface, this is a strange, even foolish question. But I hope, I think, it goes deeper than that. If there is one truth that I have come across while I have been following Kerrass around it is that the life of a Witcher is actually fairly boring. It is a life of routine, travel, find the notice, answer the notice, hunt the creature, live or die, move on. On the surface and from a distance, it can seem to be quite exciting but the reality of the matter is that even the most exciting, terrifying thing can become routine after a while. Such is the life of a Witcher.

And I have begun to feel that. What is my favourite monster? It's the monster that doesn't kill me. I mean, the obvious answer to the question is that my favourite monster is Ariadne. She didn't kill me and she and I have grown to love each other. And yet, some people would insist on classifying her as a monster despite her conversion to the faith of the Holy Flame. Something that I find endlessly amusing.

But the truth of the matter is that I do have a favourite monster and that monster is a Leshen. And the reason I like that particular monster is that they are so mysterious and incomprehensible. We understand so little about Leshen. We don't know how they reproduce, we don't know why they are created. All we have are theories. Admittedly they are often theories that seem to fit the facts that we are given.

We know that they are solitary creatures. We know that they take up a kind of lordship over woodland, the wilder and more untamed the woodland the better. We know that they have some form of intelligence and have even formed symbiotic relationships with local communities, even while that relationship can appear cruel and abusive in some ways. We know that they can communicate with animals, specifically and more commonly, wolves and crows.

We also know that they move between different sites. Sometimes on foot, or sometimes travelling along root systems or through the earth.

The list goes on.

We know that they manifest claws, they lash out with roots and vines as though they are whips, we know that they can cause roots and thorns to erupt from the ground in an explosion in order to catch the unwary.

We also know that Leshen can imprint themselves on locals and that even if you can kill the physical manifestation of the Leshen, then if there is an imprinted human in the vicinity, the Leshen will survive and regrow itself. Kerrass likens it to a gorse bush. If you hack the bush down but miss a part of the root, then the bush will inevitably regrow.

Leshen can also have altars that people can destroy or leave offerings at. They are part spirit, part physical thing and no matter how diligently or how quickly the Witchers work. There are always more.

There is even a significant amount of evidence to suggest that The Schattenmann himself is a Leshen. He has beloved people out in the villages surrounding the heart of the Black Forest. The physical form of him that Trayka had described was essentially that of a Leshen. We know that he has places of power.

But Leshen are almost universally angry, whereas the Schattenmann can be roused to anger but that is not always the case.

So why are they my favourite? Because there is so much mystery about them. During my time with Kerrass, I have faced two Leshen, the first was described, by Kerrass, as being young and not very powerful. Kerrass had identified what the problem was, had prepared properly and the thing emerged from the ground nearby. Kerrass had leapt and cut down the thing in a relatively short space of time. One of those fights that is over before it really began and I was still trying to get myself ready for a spate of violence when the violence was already over.

The second time nearly killed me. One of those times where I was not badly injured but a couple of inches to the left, or to the right, would have left me being severely injured or dead. As it was, my ribs had to be strapped up and it hurt to breathe for about a week afterwards. Kerrass decided that I would not be facing any Leshen after that.

But there is so much that we don't know. They don't… They don't feel like any other kind of monster to my mind. Vampires, trolls, necrophages and the rest obviously came from somewhere else. They were not here when they were created or born. They came from somewhere else. Spirits like wraiths or wights also come from somewhere else. Tied here by traumatic events or by something that we have to figure out. Nekkers, Cyclops, Manticores, Griffins… All of them have habits and things that we can quantify. They are natural and they behave as animals do. Even though they might come from somewhere else.

Leshen don't do that. They are simply Leshen. Someone has the theory that Leshen were here first, that the reason that they are so angry is that we are the intruders, that they see everyone as intruders.

And maybe they are right.

But I like that mystery, it calls to me somehow.

And it was on that march on the first full day of the march that I finally saw one up close.

We had stopped the line of march. This was not an unusual event and we were all waiting for the decision to be made as to what was going to happen next. I had drunk my cup of water and was nibbling on one of the oaty fruit cakes that they gave us periodically. They were deceptively tasty and the temptation was always that you wanted to wolf them down with a couple of swallows. But that always, always left me wanting more so I tried to discipline myself towards eating them gradually and in small nibbles. My resolve rarely lasted but the effort gave me something to do while I was waiting.

And also, so that I wasn't listening to Stefan complain and wonder when the march was going to start up again.

This was one of those times when Kerrass had been called to the front of the line and was seen to be chatting with Oak Leaf. They seemed to speak for a little while before one of the attending dryads was sent back towards me.

"The Witcher wants you." I was told.

I nodded and shouldered my burdens. "No," she said. "Just your weapons. You will not need your bags and someone else will bring your things."

I frowned in question but didn't push things. Something in the woman's voice suggested to me that they wouldn't listen or didn't know much anyway.

I jogged up to the front of the line to find a smiling Kerrass beckoning me to follow him.

He led me a bit into the undergrowth and we moved slowly and carefully. We had our rhythm when it comes to this kind of thing and I fell into it instinctively. He wanted us to move quietly and I followed his lead. It wasn't far. We pushed through a line of bushes. There was a gap that I guessed had been used before and as we went, we found a few dryads waiting for us. One of them motioned for us to be quiet and I was a little amused to see Oak-Leaf shoot her a look of annoyance. We crouched behind a fallen tree and Kerrass leaned over to whisper in my ear.

"I know you like them." He whispered. "And when they told me that… Well… I thought of you."

I looked over at the dryads, Oak-Leaf who had been annoyed at her friend was smiling at me and beckoned. I went to kneel next to her and she pointed through the undergrowth.

It took me a while to see what she was pointing at. At first, I thought she was pointing at a small pack of wolves that were playing around at the foot of a tree that was sitting in the opening, a little distance from the other trees. It took me a moment, a little more than that, but then I saw the deer skull up near the top of the tree and I realised that it was not a tree after all.

Then came the moment of wondering as to how I could ever have thought of it as a tree at all. It rustled itself, an almost identical gesture to the way a human might shrug or shake itself and some crows that were roosting in its upper reaches seemed to shift with a cry of protest at the sudden movement.

The Wolves were being playful, leaping about and rolling around with each other. They were still wolves though so you could see the two that had been stationed as lookouts, the pack mother who was watching indulgently. But they were still Wolves.

But I was looking at the Leshen. He… I mean I want to assume that it was a he, I struggle to think of something like that as a woman. And I have to wonder if something like that even has a gender although I know it to be true that plants do have gender, I wondered if Leshen even had them. The Leshen seemed to be watching the Wolves play and unlike every angry, dark or terrifying Leshen that I had ever heard of. This one had flowers growing on it, leaving me bemused.

The dryad who was unconcerned about whether or not we were stupid enough to make a load of noise leant over to me.

"We are taking the march around him, but your companion said that you are fascinated by Leshen."

"I am."

The dryad nodded and a look of mischief crossed her face. "Would you like to meet it?"

"What?" I wish I could have managed more wit and charm than that.

"Is that even possible?" Kerrass marvelled.

"It is possible. They would become angry if the entire troop walked up to it and said hello, but the four of us?" She shrugged before looking at the one that I classified as being junior, Oak-Leaf had clearly headed back. "Well, the three of us. We will meet the troop on the other side."

"Then of course I want to meet a Leshen." Not for the first time, I got a glimpse of what Kerrass would have been like as a young man.

The two dryads had a brief conference before the younger of the two left to inform the column of what was going on and where we were heading. The younger gave her elder a bit of a strange look before heading back the way we'd come.

"She won't last long that one," our remaining guide told us, her voice a little louder. "She sees all of this as some kind of status symbol. She wants to stand as the guardian of knowledge to keep lesser away. Follow, but go carefully and keep your hands away from weapons. You will be surprised as to just how much it understands regarding intent and attitude."

Slowly, she rose from her crouched position, gesturing for us to wait a moment while we all watched the Leshen. A single crow left the upper shoulders of the creature and flew towards us before it veered off. The dryad gestured so that Kerrass and I rose to our feet slowly and carefully. Half a dozen crows swooped towards us but the dryad gestured for calm and we stayed still.

The birds flew around us for a while, swooping and veering. One dived straight for my head and I could not help but flinch before it veered away and back to the greater flock. Gradually though, the birds seemed to calm themselves and withdraw.

The dryad beckoned and we slowly climbed over the log that had been in our way, carefully and keeping our eyes on the Leshen in front of us. The wolves were no longer playing at it's feet but rather, they were sitting on their haunches and watching us as we approached. They seemed relaxed but you can never tell with wild animals. Especially animals like this that can go from calm to angry at the drop of a hat.

Slowly, we edged forward. I didn't really know what to do in this situation, do you maintain eye contact or would that be considered a challenge. I checked with Kerrass and the dryad who was keeping her eyes on the Leshen so I decided to follow her example.

A wolf decided that we needed to be sniffed and came towards us, two others joined it directly and the dryad gestured for us to stop. One wolf came close to us while two stood between us and the Leshen and another went past us to examine our back trail. The closest one was a huge beast. I am used to hunting dogs which are not small but domesticated animals never quite prepare you for when you meet the real thing. It was looking at me with a calculating expression.

All three of us were thoroughly checked out with a kind of sceptical air to the sniffing. Anyone that might be laughing at the idea that a wolf can have enough character to appear sceptical about something, I'm afraid that you don't know enough about animals. It wasn't odd, I wasn't surprised. But what was odd was that the wolf didn't react to Kerrass in any way. Animals don't like Kerrass. Famously cats will hiss and dogs will bark. Horses can be trained but it takes some time for the horse to get used to the Witcher that is riding them and any other horse that might be nearby can also be having problems. This Wolf sniffed Kerrass' hand, his backside, his boots and the points of his swords before it moved on to me.

I was examined in a similar way before it stood in front of the two of us. Not the dryad as she seemed to be exempt from this kind of thing. Then the wolf gave a little growl to us. A more eloquent expression of "Don't be an ass and we won't have any trouble," can not easily be identified. But it seemed that we had passed some unknown test and the wolves moved away, opening an avenue between us and the Leshen.

I remember it as being tall, but not surprisingly tall. It stood at maybe eight-foot-tall all things considered. The antlers on the skull that seemed to act like the thing's face added to that height. It was also, not really solid. It seemed to be made of a tangle of branches, vines and roots. Twisted and thorny. If it stood still enough, for long enough, I am pretty sure that you could poke my spear, or a sword, straight through it.

As for this one, there were things growing up it. I could see ivy, some grass and some moss that were growing on exposed bits of wood. There were also bits of mushroom and other bits of fungus that could be seen sticking out of various places.

When I read back the things that I have just written, I am concerned that it might appear as though the description was quite funny, or give an impression that the Leshen was quite ordinary. It was not. It was a thing. A solid thing. It was like the difference between seeing the proverbial wolfskin rug and then actually seeing the thing, breath steaming in the air as it growled at you.

We approached slowly and carefully. The Leshen seemed to twist where it was with a creaking of moving wood as it stretched and adjusted itself so that it was looking down at us. The dryad gave a little curtsy and gave a little gesture that Kerrass and I should do something similar and we gave a bow.

I forced myself to look up into the eye sockets of the deer skull as it looked back at me. I was struck by a feeling of incredible age. I was looking at something ancient and unknowable. This was so utterly different and again, I was struck by the mystery of Leshen. We don't know what they want. We don't know where they come from. We don't know what they eat or even if they do eat. It would be naive to just assume that they need water and sunlight, the same as any other plant.

It felt so… alien and in that moment, the difference struck me about the face and I was frozen in awe and a kind of strange, fascinated terror. I just stood there and gaped at it, feeling stupid and at the same time… strangely peaceful. If it had wanted to kill me at that moment, it could have done so and there would have been little to nothing that I could have done to stop it.

After some moments of staring down at us, it gestured and a large patch of apple-blossom sprouted out of the ground in front of us. And yes, I know that Apple-Blossom only grows in apple trees but when the giant, terrifying monster from the depths of your innermost nightmares makes something impossible, then you might have the opportunity to comment.

I just stared at it as it turned and walked away. The crows leapt from its shoulders and circled above it while the wolves trotted at its heels. Within about twenty meters, the Leshen sank into the ground. Roots seemed to grow up from where it trod to surround its legs and pull it into the earth itself until there was nothing there. The crows circled a couple of times before they flew off in random directions. The wolves trotted off into the woods and vanished.

I just stood there, I am not ashamed to say that there were tears streaming down my face and when Kerrass put his hand on my shoulder, I jumped a mile.

"Flame," I muttered.

Kerrass understood, of course, he did.

I have spoken with trolls and Elder Vampires and spirits from other realms. But somehow, I had not been moved as much as by that Leshen in the depths of the Black Forest. I don't know, but I think that this is because of the lack of understanding. Trolls are not so far from humans in their behaviour. I'm sorry if that offends you but it's true. They want to live, eat, drink and have a good time. Vampires want to do the same and otherworldly entities largely seem to want to survive and be left to amuse themselves. I can understand that.

But Leshen? I mean I understand that they want to protect their territory and I can respect and applaud that. But other than that? I just don't know and that was me for the rest of the day. Stefan tried to engage me in conversation a couple of times but he was largely unsuccessful to the point where he accused the dryads of having done something to me.

We came to another camp in what I took to be the later afternoon and I had begun to realise the reason for the relatively short marches. The dryads took their time because they needed to make sure that they got to this place or that place without intruding on something's territory. There also needed to be time to make the detours around the monster nests when they had moved as well as the trails that other things might have chosen to use that are invisible to the rest of us.

It was a much smaller encampment than the first one. Again, there was a small garrison of women who wore the same clothing as the other scouts and warriors had been wearing. These were a bit lighter and a little bit more worn. As we approached, it became clear that we were also carrying supplies for this outpost and more than one dryad from the garrison was seen to be relieved when a crate was opened and a new robe or a cloak was produced as well as several skins of drinking water and crates of food.

We were directed as to where to set out our blankets and again, just warned to stay out of the way while the rest of the dryads did all of the chores that needed to be done. I watched as some new hatchets were vigorously employed to cut and stack some more wood that was obviously being used to shore up the defences. Several coils of rope were untangled and stacked in several key positions that meant nothing to me but were clearly very important in some kind of strategic way. Water was placed, cooking bowls were likewise put into different areas and again, just as it was beginning to get dark, the dryads seemed to drift together to stand in a group to stare off into the trees.

Stefan made a comment about now being the perfect time to make a break for it and to attain our freedom. I did my best to ignore him but Kerrass was, again, a little more brutal in his opinions.

"Answer me honestly." he said. "Do we have enough food to make the return journey or is all of our food provided for us by the dryads that we would be escaping? While you are thinking about that, consider the water situation."

Stefan frowned. "We could hunt?"

"You mean that Freddie and I could hunt. I know you can't do more than set a few traps and not very good ones. And believe the two of us when we say that hunting for food while you yourself are being hunted is far from being entirely easy. Secondly. Which way would we go to get out of the forest?"

"We could follow the…"

"The what? the back trail? Straight into the arms of the other dryads that we left behind and the greater dryad community. Who would be… I'm just guessing, less than entirely pleased to see us. Then we have to get out of the greater forest as a whole. Where we don't know the lay of the land, there are few, if any landmarks and we have no idea where we're going. Next bright idea?"

Stefan either didn't have any more ideas, or he was forced onto the back foot by Kerrass' vehemence.

"I am going forwards." Kerrass said. "I am here on a mission, a mission that you agreed to support. I am here to communicate and meet with the Schattenmann. A mission that I was commissioned by Freddie so he is unlikely to side with you. I would rather go with the dryads who are guiding us and are at least relatively friendly, until there is no other choice or they make their enmity plain. And finally, who knows how the forest will react if we flip off the chosen servants of the Lord of the Forest? I met a Leshen today. It is an experience that I will never forget and it is unlikely that it will ever happen again. I invited you with us to help us on our way. If you are not going to do that, or if you have another objective in mind then you should say so now and save us all the fuss but you should also know, that if you interfere with the dryads or anything else that's going on here. Then my only route towards survival is to help them contain you."

Kerrass stalked off. Stefan stared after him for a while before he turned in his blankets, away from me with a very thorough impression of "leave me alone" which I obeyed.

I was having my own crisis as it was, triggered by staring into the eyes of a Leshen, and I was still coming to terms with that. So it wasn't that much of a conflict for me.

I all but slept through the remains of the afternoon. Watching the dryads go through their rituals with a strange kind of detached feeling. I ate my food and didn't taste it and when it became clear that I was on the early watch meaning that I would need to get out of bed and watch the dawn, I climbed into my bedroll and went to sleep easily and without complaint.

All the way through this, all I could see in the pit of my mind's eye was that hollow socket of the deer skull. But that had not been all that had been there. By a trick of the light, some of that socket had been shadowed in darkness. But some instinct also told me that that darkness was slightly off centre, as though it was shadowed by more than just the daylight. It was that shadow that bothered me. I felt as though it was drawing my gaze and that I was sinking into it like I would a whirlpool. It wasn't the terrifying darkness that is hidden at the end of a tunnel or a cave. I could not imagine Jack looking out at me from the depths of the Leshen's face.

It was something else. It was like the yawning chasm of sleep that was opening up, ready to take me into it's embrace after a hard day. I wanted to throw myself into it.

I know that it's just a deer skull. Although Kerrass does not allow me to go anywhere near a fight with a Leshen, he has allowed me to go through what remains of the thing after it has been destroyed. Mostly, it looks like dead wood and vegetable matter. And at the end of the day, when the…. Whatever it is that animates a Leshen into being is gone, it's just an animal skull, most commonly a deer, sheep or goat skull complete with horns when applicable.

Apparently, there is even evidence that Leshen are known to change their skulls when opportunity or circumstance presents themselves.

But it's just a skull. I know it's just a skull. It is clear that it is just a skull. But I could see something there. I know that there was something there. It felt old, incredibly old and although I am all too aware that I could not possibly comprehend such matters, it felt… not wrong. But different. I was fascinated and terrified of it in equal measure. I was hypnotised by it. I desperately wanted to look away and to think about something else but no matter how hard I tried, I could not avoid but to look back and see if I could see into the darkness. I wanted to see something in there. Something that I could catch hold of in the same way that a drowning man would hold onto a floating piece of wood in the storm.

But there was nothing there.

I was reminded of the curse that had been laid onto Duchess Anna-Henrietta of Toussaint by Jack. The bottle of wine curse. The most delicious bottle of wine will grow in her obsessions until she cannot help but drink some of it. Only for it to be the most perfect wine that she has ever tasted before, giving birth to an obsession to replicate it that will consume her. I almost felt the same way about what I had seen in the depths of the eyes of the Leshen. I realised what was happening and I fought the images with fantasies about Ariadne. I am not ashamed to say that this is not a new technique for me. I try and build an image of the woman that I love in my mind. I try to picture what she will look like in her wedding dress and when I am confident in that image, I picture what she will look like when I take the wedding dress off her.

Eventually, I slept.

It took me a long time to wake up and I was bleary for a long time. The dryad that shook me awake for my watch looked at me with curiosity before sympathy and realisation seemed to take over her expression. She left for a moment and returned with a herbal drink, one of the many blends of tea that the dryads seem to have at their disposal which went some way to clear the fog from my mind. I did a little bit of a warm-up and I was stationed at one of the entrances to the enclosure that we were in. There were two of us, myself and a dryad that I took to be a little younger.

She wasn't there long though before an older dryad came and spoke to the other for a short while and replaced her.

The new dryad and I spoke a bit. She asked me questions about who I was and where I was from. It was basic questioning really including my opinions about what was going on in the greater world, the form of the Black Forest and what I thought about the place.

As I say they were very basic questions and I will admit that I found them quite annoying until I realised what she was doing. She was essentially keeping me awake and interested in the world.

"Alright," I said. "What's going on?"

She smiled at me. "Why must anything be going on?"

"You ask me questions without being interested in the answers. I can tell because your follow up questions have almost nothing to do with the initial question that you have asked."

She smiled at me. "Well done. I had been warned that you were a clever one."

She sighed before continuing.

"It takes people like that sometimes. People just drift off, drifting away with the forest. They see something or hear something and it has an effect on them. I've seen huge men, woodcutters and soldiers in the outside world that have stood at the base of our giant trees and it is the first time that they've ever felt small before they begin to weep and become as children. I have seen storytellers and bards struck dumb in awe at the sight of it all and a man who had worked in a field his entire life, never once being able to express himself, had asked for a skin that we used for recording supplies and a stick of charcoal. He drew the most amazing picture of a woman that he had never met. We had an old diary from a previous traveller that he then proceeded to fill with sketches of everything, us, animals, trees, plants and this strange woman over and over again.

"It also goes the other way sometimes. Men are driven mad by it. Women too, including dryads. They become violent, abusive, angry and snarling like wild animals. Brave men become cowards and vice versa. Cruel tyrants become pacifists. You name it, we have seen it. This place has an effect on people, you go into a place like this and you never come out the same way."

I considered this for a while.

"I feel like I did the first time I went into the cathedral in Novigrad," I said. "I remember the sheer awe of the place struck me dumb until the tears were tumbling down my cheeks and I could barely stand with the sheer impact of the entire thing. My parents had to take me away from the place before I just started to weep."

"Interesting." The woman said. "I have seen that reaction too so I wonder if there is something in common. Between your holy places and ours."

We stood in silence for a short while and I could feel my mind beginning to retreat again, the image of the deer skull floating in front of my vision.

"Can I ask a question?" I wondered

"By all means."

"What is it that you are all doing? When you all stand in a group and stare off into space I mean."

She laughed quietly. "In the morning, if we have time, I will show you."

That sense of anticipation carried me through the rest of the early morning watch. I listened as the birds started to sing in their eternal greeting of the dawn. I watched the light creep across the dead leaves and bits of twig on the ground. Shapes emerged from the dark shadows and started to take proper form and definition. Slow, steady movement in the camp behind us started to grow louder and louder. Small groups came past the pair of us in order to relieve themselves in the woods and the trees.

Breakfast was brought and it all seemed to be coming together.

I returned to our small area of the camp where it was clear that Kerrass and Stefan were still not really talking to each other. I ate and packed my gear accordingly and sure enough, the dryads started to come together in their gathering. Just standing in the open space.

When the invisible signal came and the dryads parted, my early morning companion came to me.

"Follow," She said. "Bring your things."

I did as I was told.

"Where are you taking him?" Kerrass wondered.

"That is also something that I would like to know the answer to," Stefan added, a bit sharper.

"Your companion will be returned to you." The dryad told the pair of them. "You need have no concern."

Kerrass subsided a little bit but Stefan was having none of it.

"I demand to know what…"

"You demand?" The dryad hissed. A couple of the dryads that were working nearby looked up. One of them picked up a spear.

"It's alright," I told Stefan. "I will be back soon."

My guide led me out of the camp. "Do not worry, we will return to your friends soon. This will not take long."

"Why not?" I wondered. "Why won't it take long?"

"Because you will either feel it or you will not. Now pick a direction."

"What? I thought you were my guide."

She smiled at me. "Would you be really angry with me if I told you that in this you must guide yourself?"

"I will be fairly annoyed at your cryptic speech, yes."

She laughed.

I looked around the small area outside the encampment, chose a direction and started to walk.

"Can I ask a question?"

"Of course."

"What are these encampments?"

"They are like our islands in the storm. The forest is always changing. Always turning this way and that way. The animals and those that you would call monsters are constantly shifting it. And as such, we are constantly trying to keep some kind of order so that we can get to the heart of the matter."

We came to a small clearing, I could hear running water and I stopped. "Where to now?"

"Where do you want to go?"

I chose another direction and after a moment or two, the dryad continued speaking.

"So, given that we have to make regular… pilgrimages into the heart of the forest, it became necessary for us to maintain some camps in the place. To keep an eye on things and make sure that darkness isn't overwhelming things. We have to identify sickness as it develops, rot in the plants and madness in the creatures. So early in our time here we identified those places that seemed the most stable and established camps there. And as people journey in, we take supplies to them and monitor them and maintain them. That is the task of the attendants of the Schattenmann. We "attend" to his wants, his desires and we maintain his sanctuary. To whit, the part of the forest that you are travelling through now."

"The more and more that you speak, the more and more that it sounds like you are his priestesses."

"From what I have heard about the religions of the rest of the outside world, that is not far from the truth. I heard your friend commenting the other day and he is possibly closer to the mark. All the dryads of the Black Forest are priests and holy people of the Schattenmann and the Black Forest is our church… You felt something didn't you?"

I had stopped walking. Saying that I had felt something seemed a little bit extreme but I had suddenly felt as though I had run out of pathways.

We were in a small clearing. The ground seemed undisturbed and was covered in a kind of light green, ivy looking plant. There were fines of it everywhere. We were surrounded by the trees and I could hear the birds singing in the upper branches along with the wind pushing through the leaves.

The dryad examined my face for a moment and nodded.

"Close your eyes," She said.

"It's all about the hearing and the feeling." She said. "Do you know how to remove sounds from your hearing?"

I nodded.

"Good. I thought so. You look the type to know how to meditate. I will still talk you through it though unless you have an objection."

I shook my head and as she promised she took me through it. I'm not going to go all through it now. It's a process very similar to prayer or that state that I am in when I am writing an essay or one of these articles for long periods of time.

You work through all of the other things that are going on and then one by one, you shut them out. It takes time and can take practice. Some people can just jump into that kind of state. Kerrass is one of those people, the bastard. I've seen him sit down and close his eyes before remaining still like that until a specific time of day comes up and then he climbs to his feet without even seeming as though any time has passed. I can do it in certain circumstances. When reading about something that I am particularly fascinated by or writing about something that I am particularly passionate about.

This was one of the difficult ones though. The hardest thing for me to set aside is the mysteries that surround me. Therefore, the things that I find I have to really work on are when I have to dismiss the questions that seem to define my existence.

But I went through it. She took me through a different route than I would normally use. She had me separate my feelings first which made the entire process much more difficult, at least in my experience. It is much easier to shut out the things that are further away than the ones that are internal. But this seemed to be something to do with "The absence of self" that some philosophers seem so fascinated by.

So I dismissed the feeling of the clothes on my skin, the tightness of the straps and the heaviness of the pack. I dismissed the sound of my breathing and the feeling of the air in my lungs. I dismissed the other sensations of the wind on my skin and the distant feeling that I would need to urinate before too much time had elapsed.

That took some time. Like all good meditation guides, she was patient and took her time with it. Then I was left with the greater feeling of the forest.

I dismissed the sound of the birds in the trees. Then I dismissed the small animals that were burrowing in the undergrowth. Then it was the turn of the wind in the leaves and the creaking of the branches. It was not easy. It felt unnatural to me to do things this way round. I wanted to work the other way.

But we got there anyway and I felt myself floating free.

To be clear, I was still aware of all of the other things taht she had specified. It is more a feeling of being apart from things. I know that this practice is not particularly common in the world, let alone in the academic community. So some people think that I was not able to hear the actual birdsong and trees and the like. This would be incorrect. I could certainly hear them. I wasn't ignoring them as ignoring something is an active process and takes effort. What I was doing was putting myself apart from them.

And she told me to listen. Then she said "Deeper."

And that's what it turned into. She alternated between telling me to listen and then to go deeper. It would have been silly if it had not actually felt quite profound. I did as I was told and I went deeper and deeper. I have no adequate way of describing the sensation to you. I could feel myself sinking into the ground. A strange kind of weight seemed to settle around me. It was not uncomfortable. It was like climbing into a cool bed at the end of a hot day. There was a strange buzzing noise growing in my ears and then, after another long moment, the ends of my fingers started to tingle.

I went deeper still and much further down, I felt something strange. I didn't hear it, I swear that I felt it instead. I felt a heartbeat. It was beating incredibly slowly. It was not mine, I had set that aside along with all of the other feelings from earlier. This was the heartbeat of something else. For a moment, I wondered what it was before the answer came to me. It was the heartbeat of the forest.

It was the heartbeat of the Schattenmann.

I opened my eyes and looked up at the dryad. I was crouched now although I do not remember moving. I had pushed my hands into the dirt and I was touching a tree root. What I felt was an echo of the same kind of horrified fascination that I had felt as I looked up at the Leshen.

The dryad looked down at me with a strange expression, almost one of sympathy, respect and kindness on her face. She held out her hand and helped me to my feet.

"Well done." She said. "Not many can do that on their first try."

"This isn't a forest is it," Was the only thing I could think of to say.

"It is." She told me. "But it is also the Schattenmann. He is in the forest, the air, the water and the trees. When people see him, they are not seeing The Schattenmann himself. They are more seeing a manifestation of the Schattenmann. They are seeing the thing that he is possessing and using. And sometimes, very rarely, he might manifest as himself and when that happens?"

A look of genuine terror swept across her face.

"I still have nightmares about that night. The rage of the Schattenmann is… terrible."

I took that in for a moment.

"Come," She said. "We must rejoin the party and we must move swiftly if we are to catch them."

We jogged back the way that we had come until we came to the encampment. I ran easily and it actually felt a little bit better to be moving at a reasonable pace. There were still dryads in the encampment continuing the same kinds of maintenance chores that you can find people performing up and down the world in small border garrisons. Boxes being stacked and restacked, dirt being cleaned out. I saw one woman cutting encroaching vines away with a long knife.

She wept as she did so.

We stayed long enough for my companion to check the line of march and we ran off again.

As I say, it felt good to run. To put all of the rest of things behind me. There was just the feeling that I was running, that I would continue to run and that all I had to do was to follow my guide and pay attention to my immediate surroundings. There was a strange sense of peace that was in my heart that had settled there since I had felt something as part of the meditation.

It sometimes takes you that way if you have gone into a deep trance. Those moments where you have to force yourself to put down the pen in order to eat something, relieve yourself or go to bed. But you find yourself resenting that process and looking forward to being able to take up the pen again, even as you know taht the thought will have escaped from you and you will spend hours, sometimes days, before you find it again.

I felt like that. I wanted to sit somewhere quiet and think, but if I couldn't do that, then running through the green splendour of the Black Forest was good enough.

We caught up with the party disappointingly quickly. Kerrass and Stefan greeted me when I approached and Oak-Leaf called for a brief rest.

"How did it go?" She asked of my guide.

"He did well." Was the response. "He certainly felt something in there. I think… I think that the Schattenmann might have chosen."

Oak-Leaf nodded. "There are other candidates." She said.

"Look at him." my guide, whose name I hadn't learned. "Look at his face."

Oak-Leaf looked at me for a long time before grunting and moving back towards the head of the line.

"Wait," Stefan said. "What do you mean, 'The Schattenmann has chosen' what does that mean."

"Now is not the time." She told him, having stopped to listen, she turned and restarted her movements.

"When will be the time?" Stefan demanded. "What has the Schattenmann decided? What has he chosen?"

The dryads ignored him.

"Good luck." My guide shook my hand as she turned to go. "I hope to see you again."

"What does that mean?" Stefan demanded. "What do you mean by that?"

My guide gave him a withering glare. Nodded to Kerrass and then just moved off back the way we had come.

"Shut up." Kerrass snarled. "Just shut up, will you. Stop antagonising them by asking questions that you know that they are not going to answer."

Stefan glared back. Then he blinked and sighed. For a moment, it looked as though he had been about to say something but then he stopped and turned away.

His attitude of martyred resentment finally got through to me and I snapped.

"What?" I demanded. "What is it? Why are you so determined to hate these people and to drive them away and to split them apart? Why are you so determined to undermine us and aggravate them? Have you forgotten what we are here to do and what we are here for?"

He stopped, stared at his feet for a moment and then shook his head before walking off.

"I will admit that I would like to know the answer to that as well." Kerrass snarled, standing next to me.

Stefan stopped in his tracks for a moment.

"I have not forgotten." He said, turning around. He looked calm and there was an infuriating sense of righteousness in his face.

"No, I have not forgotten." He went on. "Indeed, I wonder if I am the only person here who still remembers what is at stake here."

He stopped for a moment and looked at the pair of us before he turned, picked up his pack again and walked away.

"Fuck," said Kerrass.

I just looked at the broad back of the church soldier that I had liked once.

Kerrass looked over to the head of the line.

"And with that, it seems we are starting to move again."

I spent some time trying to argue with Stefan, but he resolutely refused to get anywhere close to me where words could be exchanged. He walked in front of me and when I sped up my pace in order to get a bit closer to him, he would increase his own pace and I would be forced to jump to catch up to him. After which, the other dryads would frown at the pair of us and look at us with disappointment and condemnation in their eyes until we fell back into place.

Kerrass seemed to be the same way as he was thinking furiously.

When it became clear that Stefan wasn't going to talk to me, I took a bit of time to try and examine what he ahd said and see if he was right, even remotely.

I did not like what I found.

I thought of Ariadne and wondered how I felt now. It was true, she would forgive me. I was confident in that. She had proved it now, several times. I had a look at my own behaviour and I absolutely believe that I would have been killed if I hadn't agreed to spend time with Chestnut-Shell and Apple-Seed. Or worse. I remembered the herbal stimulants that we had all partaken of and wondered what the more powerful versions of those things would have done to my mind and body.

I had done that to save my own life and I had behaved towards the two dryads as best as I could.

But had I betrayed Ariadne?

Then there was the possibility that they had behaved like some kind of honey trap. Was I being indoctrinated? I thought of the stories that Trayka had told us. About what we had heard in Piotr's home village. And the emaciated skeleton of a priest that had been hung from a church door. How did I feel about the Schattenmann now? And how much of that was a conclusion that I had reached myself and how much was the result of a manipulation of some kind. How much of it was the result of a bit of kindness and a bit of eroticism.

I didn't like the answers I came up with. Or rather, I didn't like the answers that I couldn't come up with.

We came to a place for lunch. It was chosen a bit more carefully than the places we had previously stayed for lunch. It had a feeling of a lookout point. It was a flat platform up a tree branch. We had to climb a rope ladder to get to it where we discovered a series of platforms that were linked by rope bridges. There were a couple of other dryads that were already there. They had been expecting us and while we rested ate and drank, Oak-Leaf and the leader of those look-outs seemed to have a long conversation about the things that were coming up. There was a lot of pointing and directive behaviour. Curves being described with hands and gestures, that kind of thing.

I tried to find a quiet place to sit and have a think while I drank my soup and ate my sandwich. I didn't taste it really, I was staring off and into the trees while I ate and drank and was only dimly aware that Kerrass was still trying to have some form of conversation with Stefan. It was not going well for either of them.

I thought of Ariadne and I tried to bring her face to my mind.

I couldn't do it. This troubled me more than I can easily describe.

It's how I get to sleep at the end of a long day. If I have finished talking to Ariadne then I will say my nighttime prayers and lay down on my blankets. Often, I get to sleep fairly easily but if I am having any kind of difficulty then I will work at picturing Ariadne. Picturing her body and shape is fairly easy. She's a tall woman and after that, I always picture some of what she would describe as her "working robe," which is a dark, mostly shapeless dress that she uses when she is working in her lab or out in the fields with her people. It's black or at least it's mostly black now. Time in the sun has caused it to fade a little bit to a dark grey. It's belted with a plaited leather belt and there are various pouches and packed scroll cases that are hung from it. Once you can imagine that, then you pretty much have the shape of her.

Then you picture dark hair which she pulls over her left shoulder. She claims to do this because it means that it is more in her control there rather than elsewhere but I am well aware of my own tastes and I have always found it looks particularly beautiful on her. So I sense that she does it for me.

Then I work on her face, forming it in my mind. I normally get to about her nose when I fall asleep or something else distracts me.

That's how I work it. I've passed miles of fields of cabbages and turnips with that technique. I have sailed onboard ships for miles occupying my time with this most basic of mental exercises.

But now I couldn't picture her. It troubled me. The desperation I began to feel to get this job done so that I could go and see her again began to feel a bit more overwhelming. I wanted to see her. I needed to see her and talk to her. I didn't like this anymore.

We set off again after we had eaten, climbing down from the flets and it was at this moment that disaster struck.

There was an Arachas waiting for me. Arachas are strange beasts, partly insectoid in nature but they also have these blooms on their backs which means that they can disguise themselves in all but the open fields.

The ladder was lowered and a couple of our Dryad escorts went down first. Even though according to them, the forest was quiet and unworried, they were taking no chances and they went first to cover our descent. But with there only being one ladder, they had to move off to allow the rest of us room to get down onto the ground. Stefan had gone first, a dryad followed him and then I went. I managed to get down on my own two feet which was a good start considering how often I've got that step wrong and ended up collapsing. I rubbed my hands to get rid of the dust and dirt that comes from the ladder as well as to get rid of the feeling of the wood on my hands. I turned, moving away and adjusting the straps on my pack and making sure that I had my spear easily within reach as I got out of the way so that the next person could come down the ladder.

And the next thing I knew, something had struck me from behind and I was tumbling through the undergrowth. I landed badly and tried to roll. Something bit into my leg and I saw a white light.

Someone shouted something. Someone answered but my hearing was going echoey. It was actually not that unpleasant but at the same time, I had no idea what was going to be happening.

I heard the sound of swords being drawn. There are only so many things that sound like that and it's unmistakable. There was more shouting.

I kept rolling. I needed to stay out of the way of whatever was happening. I found a flat bit and tried to climb to my feet but my leg wasn't working. At some point, I had forgotten that it was my leg that had been injured so I fell again.

I was blinking against something, possibly pain or the effects of poison. Something was trying to obscure my vision.

More people were shouting, something was crashing. Some part of me was dimly aware that the venom of an Arachas was toxic and that I might be dying.

I laughed. Yet another time I was being poisoned to death and I was in real danger of my insides being liquified by venom. I remembered how that had turned out last time and I suddenly wanted Ariadne so badly that I sobbed. The distant part of my brain that was aware of what was happening to me was commenting that the venom was also obscuring my thinking process. Funnily enough, that wasn't helpful.

There were strange noises. An odd kind of buzzing noise that, at first, I thought was in my ears but I could hear other things going on as well. People were shouting and screaming, not in fear or pain but there was a direction behind it. Something was being determined and then.

The shouting changed to shouts of anger. I tried to stand again, some pointless part of me that wanted to face my death with honour. At some point, reflexive muscle memory had found my spear and I used it to lever myself to my feet.

I opened my eyes to see Stefan pounding the body of the Arachas into mush. Kerrass stood nearby and some of the echoey feelings in my ears began to make sense. There had been magic used.

The dryads came out of the trees with their bows drawn and arrows with strange heads attached to the arrows. I blinked at them curiously before I wobbled on my feet and gently tipped backwards to land on my ass.

"Oww," I said, feeling a bit stupid.

Kerrass was next to me in a moment with a dagger out, examining my wound, cutting away some of my trousers to get a better look.

Oak-Leaf crouched next to him.

"Tell me you have some Arachas antidote," Kerrass demanded.

"We do." She said before she turned and bellowed a name. I winced away from the sudden sound and felt myself starting to drift off. It wasn't painful. That was one of the more worrying things. It wasn't painful. It was… actually rather pleasant. The outsides of things were beginning to be a bit fluttery. I could see colours that I could not even imagine and I felt… actually quite good.

Another figure crouched next to me and I looked up into her face without really seeing it.

"Hello," I said and grinned at her a bit lopsidedly.

"Hi," She said before bending over and examining my leg.

Then I screamed as she reached in and seemed to play with it.

I passed out for a second there and the next thing I knew I was swallowing something that tasted of old socks. I swallowed and I swallowed again.

"Don't vomit." A woman's voice said and I swallowed feverishly. My leg felt numb now. "He'll be alright." She said to Kerrass and Oak-Leaf that were standing over me. "He'll sleep tonight and I would suggest that we have someone near him in case he gets dizzy again. But other than that?"

Kerrass crouched next to me while Oak-Leaf and the healer conferred.

"How long was I unconscious?" I asked.

"Not long, a minute or two?" He said.

I looked around and realised why I was surprised. "But… it's getting dark."

"Yeah." Kerrass told me, his voice without tone. Yes, it is."

"What the fuck did you do that for?" Oak-Leaf demanded of Stefan.

"It was attacking my friend." Stefan insisted.

"What's going on?" I asked Kerrass as I did my best to look at my leg which didn't seem to be as bad as I thought it was. I had imagined a gaping wound but instead, it was more a case of a couple of puncture marks.

"Stefan killed the Arachas," Kerrass said. "They didn't want him to and are angry."

"Oh," I said before I felt the confusion kick in. "What?"

"It seems that to them, the Arachas was like a curious dog coming to say hello. They had an antidote to the poison that got into your system so all that had to be done was to drive the thing off. They had noise arrows and were shouting and all kinds of things. It was working too if you ask me but Stefan decided that you were at risk so…well."

He gestured at the dead Arachas.

"Oh," I said again, thinking of the speech that Oak-Leaf had given at the beginning of the journey. "Shit."

Oak-Leaf gestured aggressively at Stefan who simply put his sword away. There was a feeling about him that he had essentially given up. There was a righteous slant to his shoulders that you see when a person has had enough of arguing with someone. When they have decided that the other person in the argument is just too stupid to listen and that the best thing to do is to walk away.

Stefan moved over to where his pack was and found two dryads barring his way with bows bent.

Oak-Leaf approached me and looked me up and down. "How are you doing?" she asked, gesturing at my leg.

"It stings," I told her, testing my weight and the movement of the injured muscle. "Annnndddd it's tender."

"Can you move?"

I thought about it for a moment.

"I can move."

She turned to Kerrass who was examining my leg from where he was standing. He was more watching me move rather than actually getting up close and personal.

"Can he move?" She asked him. "Sometimes an Arachas' venom can give people a wrong idea of…"

"He can move," Kerrass said. "He will surprise you with how fast he can move. Believe it or not, we have been through worse than this and been injured worse than this."

She looked a little sceptical. So did I for that matter.

"But that doesn't change the fact that he shouldn't have to move." Kerrass insisted. "Is there any reason that we can't rest for the afternoon and start again in the morning?"

"Yes." She said. "By nightfall, this place is going to be swarming with insectoids looking for some vengeance. Insects, wolves, bears. We are abandoning this place to the forest."

She gestured and we could see the two lookouts that we had met there, lowering boxes and bundles of supplies down to the waiting travellers who were dividing the burdens among themselves.

"It is no small thing to abandon an outpost this far into the forest," Oak-Leaf said with more than a little heat in her voice.

"I apologise," I said. "I was stupid and allowed myself to…"

"Not your fault." She insisted. "It happens, indeed, we have been lucky not to have any other things come and have a look at us. It wasn't really attacking you. It was just wanting to say hello."

"Really?" I felt an echo of my own touch of anger. "I would hate to see one when it was angry."

Kerrass cleared his throat to cover my brief spurt of anger.

"In my experience, Arachas don't just want to say hello." He told the dryad.

"None of your experience takes applies in the heart of the Black Forest." Oak-Leaf snapped before taking a breath. "No Lord Frederick. It is not you that should be sorry."

She took another breath and turned to see what was happening with Stefan. He was standing, facing the irate dryads with his hand on his sword hilt and a relaxed attitude about his frame. I have seen that attitude so many times in the past. It was the mark of a man that was ready to fight and kill at a moment's notice.

Remember that if you are still looking for pointers on what to do if you find yourself out in the world. Do not look for the tension, the red faces and the raised voices. Those people are working themselves up to the violence but are not there yet. Instead, look for the quiet ones, the pale ones and the relaxed ones. They are the people that are comfortable with violence, are ready to do unspeakable things and are even looking forward to them.

Oak-Leaf groaned and stomped over.

I limped after her and Kerrass followed. My leg hurt but it felt like one of those things that would be fine if I just kept moving. It would be really stiff in the morning and I was not looking forward to when the painkillers that the dryads had given me would start wearing off.

"Lower your bows," Oak-Leaf told them.

"But he…"

"I know what he did." Oak-Leaf snarled. "And I am as angry as you. But we do not have time. And we cannot carry our burdens and guard him."

Stefan did not smirk as he reached past for his pack. But you could see it in his body language.

"Ok listen," Oak-Leaf called out. "We have to go now and go quickly. If you can't keep up, dump your burdens and move faster. Supplies can be replaced but you can't. Keep your bows out and your eyes moving. We shoot to kill now."

There was a moan at this last order.

"I know, I know," Oak-Leaf said. "And I agree. But that doesn't change that we have a job to do. This isn't the first time something like this has happened and it won't be the last. We must reach the moon circle as fast as we can. Let's move. The forest is angry."

And so saying, she pushed past all of the watching and listening dryads, past Kerrass and I and picked up her own packs which had increased in size a little bit before she was off and jogging.

Not all that long ago, I had bemoaned the fact that we were moving quite as slowly as we were, but now I would have given anything to return to that slower pace. Hardship is always worse than you remember. I can distinctly remember the horror of Northern Redania and the cold of the Skeleton Ship. But in the here and now of half walking, half jogging, through the Black Forest of Southern Nilfgaard, both of them paled in comparison to the agony that I was now going through.

Pain leeches at you, it robs you of breath, strength and concentration. To make matters even more exciting, the drugs that they had given me to neutralise the poison were conspiring with said poison to make me feel light-headed and euphoric. I was blinking furiously and waving to push aside light blue strings that floated through my vision. There was nothing there of course, but it seemed to me that I was wading through a series of vines or cobwebs that were glowing with a blue light. A blue light that called me to go to sleep.

It is an advantage to know that you are going mad. I could take those feelings and knowing what was happening, I could dismiss them as the ravings of being under the influence of something akin to a strong amount of moonshine.

We stopped a couple of times, both times I was brought water and told to drink as much of it as I could stomach. One time, I vomited and no sooner had I done retching than they were pushing the wooden water cup back into my hands and I was drinking the water again to make up for what I had lost.

I know that the line was attacked three times. I only remember two.

The first was that a swarm of Endrega's came out of the woods and hurled themselves at us. Kerrass felt and saw them coming and was shouting a warning. He tossed Stefan a cloth covered in the oil required to slay the Endregas and the two leapt into the middle of the oncoming tide of beasts and their swords sang. The dryads saw how the fight was going and backed off. Some shot to thin the tide as it came on and others picked off the monsters that were coming around the flanks of the two swordsmen.

They wept as their bowstrings sang.

I didn't take part in the fight. I found a tree, put my back to it and propped myself so that I could lunge with relative ease. I didn't need to worry. Yes, there were a lot of them and yes, I was injured. But at the end of the day, Kerrass knew his work well and say what you like about Stefan, he was a fine swordsman. Even more than one dryad was forced to thank him for saving their lives in the midst of all the ruckus.

The second time we were attacked it was a pair of Leshen. Yes, you read that right. It was a pair. And I know, every academic from my current writing desk to the ends of the earth are currently reaching for their writing quills to tell me that Leshen are solitary creatures that only hunt and claim territories by themselves. I know, believe me, I know. I have literally written the entry on the subject from the Oxenfurt Encyclopedia of Relicts on the subject.

But that's what happened. A horde of wolves came running towards us. A flight of crows swept out of the trees and the Leshen sprouted from the ground underneath us. We lost a dryad in that fight, impaled on a branch. This time, I didn't have a choice in the matter. I was pushed to the ground and by the time I managed to get to my feet, the entire thing was over. Kerrass hacked down one of the two Leshen and the other fell to a pair of dryads that took were levering their woodcutting axes out of the thing with their feet by the time I climbed to my feet. Stefan was covered in the blood of the Wolves and was grim-faced while Kerrass was coming down from all the potions that he had taken.

The third attack… I don't remember the third attack. Apparently, there were bears. Three of them. Two of them fell to arrow strikes before they got anywhere near the rest of us. The other died, bellowing in pain and anguish. I don't remember it. According to Kerrass, he just deposited me on the ground and I put my head in my hands.

It didn't seem to take too long to get to the final camp. But at the same time, it was a march as long as years. I fair collapsed to the ground when we made it into the small wooden wall that marked the entrance to the camp and I didn't take it all in. I was just pointed at a patch of ground and I collapsed on it. Some people might claim that I slept, other people might say that I passed out. I wouldn't try and claim that either person was right.

I woke up a little time later to find the healer going over my injury again and she seemed pleased with the results. I nodded and smiled as she talked but there was little to nothing that I could do about that. After it was done, she gave me somehting else to drink and I passed out again.

It was dark when I woke up and not just because of where we were either.

It turned out that the final camp before we came to the heart of the forest was in a cave. It made sense, although I had no idea where the hill or mountain was that could support a cave, but I forced my brain to shut up and just accept what it was being told. There was a hole in the top that was covered with some kind of reed cover to allow ventilation. And there was a wooden palisade at the entrance. I was informed that I would not be needed for guard duty that night and that I should rest up.

It was dark and when Kerrass came over, he was carrying my bowl of stew and a hunk of trail bread and told me to eat it.

"How long was I asleep?" I wondered.

"Not long," Kerrass told me. "An hour or two."

I looked towards the entrance of the cave where the shadows were visibly deepening and he smirked. "Yeah, I know."

He sighed and sat down next to me.

"It's been like that for a little while now. It started as a small cloud in the sky except that it was rising from the forest like that miasma that you can see over the smithing district of Novigrad. It got thicker and thicker until it became clear that it was spreading and the sky began to darken. It had already started shortly after the Arachas was killed. The dryads are saying that it was Stefan's fault, that it is The Schattenmann's wrath made manifest but I'm not so sure. It thickened with an awful speed and we can't see enough of the sky to make sure.

"Fucking lovely," I commented. "What's going on otherwise?"

"Not entirely sure. I've asked several of them what's going on and they just repeat the line that 'The forest is angry'. And before you comment, I did ask them what the difference between The Schattenmann and the forest was and they won't answer me. They all seem to have jobs to do and none of them are answering. I'm pretty certain that more than one of the other dryads is trying to get Oak-Leaf to make good on her threat and slit Stefan's throat and leave them to it. They think that that will appease the Schattenmann."

"Yeah…. Will it?"

"I have no idea. When we came here, I thought that what we were dealing with was a particularly powerful Leshen. To be fair, it could still be that. Although the prospect of a Leshen having another Leshen working for it is a terrifying prospect in and of itself. In theory, yes. Dragging Stefan off into the woods, slitting his throat and leaving him to it would be a demonstration of contrition and would allow the Schattenmann, the Leshy, to take its rage out on the offender. But will it work here?"

He shrugged.

"If it is a Leshen, then this would prove the long-standing theory that the older and larger the forest, the older and Larger the Leshen. The power of what is happening here is greater than anything I've seen before or even heard of before."

"Other Witchers have been here before though right?"

"They have, and everyone that makes it back, because not all of them do, but everyone that comes back is changed by the experience. I am beginning to see why. I've seen some shit while travelling with you Freddie, I really have. Stuff that any other Witcher under any other circumstance would have rode away from. And it has astonished me that we have gotten as far and as high as we have. We know what Jack is for crying out loud and you had an extended conversation with the Unseen Elder."

"We lifted Sleeping Beauty's curse."

"We did and stood up to an angry dragon in the offing. It's awe-inspiring what we've done. This is different though."

"How so? It doesn't feel bigger or scarier. We are both fitter than we were when we were running through the woods of Northern Redania. We have food and water for a start."

"Because this isn't alien. This isn't strange to me. I recognise what is happening here. The only reason that I'm not saying that this is a Leshen is because of the sheer scope of the power. That is why it's different."

I considered that for a while.

"Are they going to slit Stefan's throat and leave him to it?"

"I don't actually think so," Kerrass told me. "If it were me, I would say that it won't work anyway."

"Why not?"

"Because I've killed creatures in these woods as well. More than one Endrega fell to my blade. So did some of the dryads, their arrows were frighteningly accurate. Shedding blood to placate it is not going to work here."

"Let's say that it is a Leshen," I said. "What do we do?"

"I've been thinking about that." He said, scratching his chin. "It's the scale of the problem that is the issue. Leshen have gathered followers before. Druids and the like who have, themselves, the charisma and the skills to draw more followers. Piotr's story suggests that it is more than likely that it has marked people, probably several people in the surrounding villages. If this was another Leshen, I would say we have two choices. We run or we fight."

"They are the most traditional of choices." I said, trying for a smile.

"We advance to the thing, destroy the thing and then flee. It will take time for it to rebuild itself from one of the marked people in the area. In that time it's followers will be confused and disoriented. Then we make our escape. Or we cut out the fight and flee anyway."

"But the followers will be coordinated."

"They will. And in this case, the followers know the ground. We are several days in and we don't know the way out. At best they catch us in three, maybe four days."

Stefan joined us, sitting down with a bowl of soup and a small chunk of bread. He looked calm, happy even.

"Are we discussing strategy?" He wondered.

I took a deep breath to let him have it but Kerrass held up his hand. "We are." He told the armoured warrior.

"Fight or flee?" Stefan asked.

"Pretty much."

I would have got up to leave but I needed to rest my leg.

"Are you ready for some stupid ideas?" Stefan smiled. "One of my teachers once said that to find the right answer, you must first set aside all of the wrong ones."

I sighed and settled down to think things through. It was a good saying.

"The forest is long and thin," Stefan said. "Maps tell us that. Yes, it's weeks travel from Northern tip to Southern tip, but at most it's a couple of weeks across. And if we're in the middle, why not make a dash East, or West."

"Which way is either?" Kerrass asked. "East is… I think… that way but the forest canopy makes that difficult and in this shadow? We couldn't strike out now."

"Also there is the ridge to navigate," I said. "Before we came down to the dryad's settlement, we came over a ridgeline and we had to come over the lip carefully. We don't know about that line, and there could be passes that only take us over and through that ridge in specific areas. We could lose them easily or find ourselves trapped against the ridge wall."

"And then the monsters could come and trap us." Stefan nodded. "Could we follow the back trail?"

"We could try?" Kerrass said. "But the terrain moves and they took us by a circuitous route. Even if they were not doing that to distract us, it would mean that they could get ahead of us easily and if we took short-cuts, then who's to say that they weren't avoiding legitimate obstacles."

"Like Monster nests." I said. "And then we would have to sneak through the dryad village."

"Which is, even more, their terrain than the heart of the Forest is. Not to mention the surrounding forest from there where they found us within two days of us entering." Kerrass agreed.

Stefan nodded unperturbed and scooped out his stew bowl with a chunk of his bread.

"I suppose that neither of you wants to fight our way free of the dryads."

"I had considered that." Kerrass admitted to my surprise. I will admit that I would not have been ok with that particular plan. "But we will lose. I can parry an arrow, two or three from unskilled opponents. But there's…" He checked around, "over a dozen highly skilled archers here plus an unknown number of lookouts. Any one of them is good enough to find the gaps in your armour, Stefan. And even if Freddie was uninjured. He is neither equipped nor skilled enough to stand up to sustained arrow fire."

He turned to me. "That's not a criticism Freddie. There are not many that I would rather have at my side than you, but you would need the skills of a Witcher or the full Segmented armour of the Imperial Guard to stand up to the arrows of these dryads. That plan is not going to work."

Stefan nodded. He didn't look surprised and I don't think that Kerrass had said anything that he hadn't expected himself.

"Then I think that the answer is simple." He said. "We do not have enough time or enough knowledge. We must play along for a while yet until the situation changes. In the meantime, we look for opportunities to take advantage of. But I think that the next time we will be able to act is when we get to the "heart of the forest' whatever that means."

I couldn't help myself.

"You know that we would have a lot more options if you had just followed their instructions and not killed that beast," I said, regretting the words almost as soon as they were out of my mouth.

"Maybe," He admitted, not taking my anger badly. "Maybe not. Maybe if I had not acted, you would now be dead." He shrugged. "That is the way of things. It is done now and I cannot bring myself to regret it."

"Why not?" I wondered. "That could prove to have been disastrous." I tried to keep the disgust and the anger out of my voice but I was clearly not entirely successful. Stefan sighed and carefully set his bowl aside.

"I apologise Lord Frederick." He spoke formally. "I was wrong back in the dryad's village when I said that you were damned. That was wrong and cruel of me. You took a great burden from my shoulders and in my haste and in my fear, I applied the same rules that bind me to you. That was wrong of me and I'm sorry. Chastity is not the only route to purity and I hope, in the long term, that you will be able to forgive me.

"Witcher, I also owe you an apology as well. I understated your expertise in many things. Specifically in the status of monsters and what makes a monster. I have no excuse for that. These people are not monsters." He gestured at the other dryads that were milling around in that mid-morning rest period. "They are not and I see that now. But I also see something else that you are possibly missing out on.

"You, both of you, are being seduced whether you realise it or not."

Kerrass opened his mouth to protest and I will admit that I was not so far behind him. Stefan raised his hands and for the first time, there was some heat in his voice.

"No, no, let me finish. The two of you have been lecturing me now for some time and it's time that you understood where I am coming from. There is a reason for an oath of chastity and it's because it gives you clarity. You are both being seduced by pretty faces. I just want to remind you both of a pair of things. These people killed Henrik, they forced Trayka to become like them and they forced you, Freddie, to betray the woman you love.

"And you, Witcher, to perform a job.

"They are not monsters. I agree with that point. They are people and both of you are, bafflingly alright with being manipulated in such a way. Henrik was murdered. A good man was killed. Now I know all the arguments and justifications, he was the oldest of us, the least useful and I have heard that he was sick anyway, but still. That doesn't change the fact that he was murdered. Brutally.

"No, Kerrass. I am speaking now.

"If this was any other situation and a group of people captured you, forced you to do a job for them or they would kill you. You would resent it wouldn't you. I have read the tales of the bard and the works of our friend scholar here. Both of those works bemoan the times when a local noble has been offended that a Witcher won't work for free, they think up a trumped-up charge in order to force you to do some form of work for them and expect you to be grateful to be allowed to leave with your life. If this were any other circumstance, you would be steaming with rage, but because you slept with one of them and have empathy, have been shown some affection. You forgive them.

"Trayka was forced to do what she did. She might be happy, it might be better for her in the long run. But she was forced to do it. It was that or die. If, as you say, being a dryad is a religion. Then forcing people to a new religion at knifepoint is one of the worst evils that we can commit. My religion says that the more traditionalist aspects of your religion agree, Lord Frederick. It's only recently that forced conversion has become a thing in the Eternal Flame. Other religions of the North couldn't give a damn who you worship. Trayka was forced. I hope it works out for the best for her but never lose sight of the fact that Trayka was forced.

"And you Freddie. You were forced to break your own morals in order to survive. I've seen you turn aside pretty village girls on several occasions out of loyalty to that Vampiric Sorceress of yours. You are gentle and kind but when some have been forceful or insistent. You shut them down dead. But here… I mean, I understand. No one will blame you for it. Survival is a thing. But they forced you to that. I have no doubt that the women that you were with were wonderful and kind and obviously beautiful. But they forced you to do that and in doing so you saved my life. I could even make an argument to say that they took advantage of your kindness and noble soul, your desire to keep me safe.

"You say, both of you now, you say that being a dryad is a religion. I can see why you might think that but you are wrong. They do all of these things in service to another. They do these things in service to the Schattenmann. I don't know if he's a God or not. There are signs in either direction but you are, both of you, forgetting a number of stories.

"On the approach to the Black Forest, the Schattenmann was a figure of fear, of awe, of terror. Remember Piotr's story. The priests that caused the lynching of Piotr's wife were wrong. Obviously, they were wrong. Evil even. But to then be murdered themselves? All of those people could have been guided back into the proper light of the sun. What happened to those people wasn't Justice. It was vengeance.

"Think of Trayka's story. An old village tradition. Not a law. It was a taboo. You cannot tell me that people hadn't crossed her line of ash before then. I won't believe you. Games like the one she described of young people tormenting each other by standing on a post with their back to real or imagined threats are common all through the continent. How far into the field with the Bull do you dare to go. How far into the house of the scary old man at the end of town. Do you dare throw a stone at the noble, the mage? How long can you stand on the edge of the cliff in high wind? There are loads of examples. Even exactly like the one that she describes. Don't cross that line or the Witch will get you.

"People always cross the line and then one day, the Schattenmann attacks. People are injured, even killed and then others are taken. The dryads tell us that some of those people taken wind up with them. Get turned into dryads themselves or Father new dryads. Some make the pilgrimage that we ourselves are on now. Apparently, some of these people are released, and some of them carry on. My question is, why do you believe this? Because the dryads don't have a reason to lie? Of course, they do. The Schattenmann told them too. Because those other victims died horrible deaths. And if they were released, why have none of them returned home?

"And lastly, the priest hanging from the church. A being that could do all of that. All of the things that he could do. He could have driven those people away. He could have caused storms to make the colony unlivable and unviable. He could have only punished the priest. Instead, all of those innocents vanished. Not just the priest. What happened to them and why do we believe that they aren't dead or dying somewhere in torment in the middle of the forest somewhere. People have learned their lesson. He could let that priest go.

"You have both said, many times that this is a religion. It's not. It's a cult. The Schattenmann is the head of it. He is cruel and… and … terrifying and arbitrary and otherworldly. If he has morals at all, they are not the kind of morals that we can comprehend. His priorities are so utterly different and alien that… they are quite possibly beyond our understanding. He is insanely powerful to an awe-inspiring level. And we are going to meet him. And earlier today it was suggested that he might have chosen Freddie. For what? And what will happen to the rest of us that he hasn't chosen?"

He shook his head.

"The dryads are people. I agree. They are not monsters. They are people. And like all people, they want some of the most basic things that a person can want. They want somewhere to belong. They want togetherness and freedom and expression and they want that feeling that they serve something greater than themselves. That is how cults are born. By people or things that take advantage of that. Who offers meaning where there is not necessarily any.

"The dryads are not the Schattenmann's servants, not his guards or his… priestesses. They are his victims. I have seen this sort of thing many times. Many times. And I have read your accounts of the cult of the First-Born in the North Lord Frederick. I would like to think that if you had had a proper arm of your church that was properly devoted to hunting out heretics and cults rather than people who did it for the pursuit of their own political ends, then that cult might have been spotted by proper servants of the church.

"But sometimes, cultists cannot be saved. I am sorry for the dryads. I can only wish that we had found out about their plight sooner. I hope, I really do, that in the long run something can be done to help them. I even hope that the Schattenmann can be reasoned with in some way. If what he has done is about survival, then maybe he can be convinced that survival is not as problematic as it was before and that maybe he can let go of some of his… more restrictive policies.

"But experience tells me differently.

"Cultists do not react rationally and you cannot argue with them. They rarely even accept the evidence of their eyes or their ears and they will hate you for trying to change their viewpoint. They believe in… whatever it is that they worship. In this case, they believe in The Schattenmann. They cannot, they will not accept that he would harm them and it does not occur to them that something in that process might go wrong.

"We have to assume, in fact, that everything they tell us is a lie in order to protect ourselves from indoctrination. Even if that indoctrination seems sensible to us at the time. Later, when separate from the circumstances in a place of safety and comfort. With the freedom to think and so on. Then, by all means, join a nice benevolent cult of peace, love and understanding. I understand northerners are a polytheistic society and that it is easier for northerners to think like that anyway.

"But here and now. We are surrounded by danger. Subject to a power and a leader that does not necessarily have our best interests at heart. We must think independently and we must think of our own safety first.

"Think on this. If there were any other circumstances. Let's say…. You were travelling through a Lord's lands. You are warned that the wife of the Lord keeps unusual pets. You take care, but despite your precautions, an Arachas jumps out at one of your companions. It bites him, poisons him and looks bound to eat or otherwise damage him. Would you stay your hand when your guide tells you 'Oh don't worry. It's just a sign of affection?' Or would you trust your own two eyes and experience with Arachas?"

"I would make a judgement on the circumstance," Kerrass said. "It had not killed Freddie yet and he was clear."

"Arachas move damned fast." Stefan was unperturbed. "And not all of us have Witcher reflexes in order to make the change accordingly. My companion, even if he is no longer my friend, which saddens me by the way, was in danger. I only had the word of those who I have no reason to trust, and every reason to distrust, that Freddie was safe. I acted. I cannot say that I am sorry.

"But remember that gentlemen. This is not a religion as they claim. It is a cult. If you take on no other piece of my thinking, then remember that and use it when you are choosing your next course of action."

He gathered up Kerrass and my food bowl and moved off.

"Well." Kerrass admitted. "That was a perspective that I didn't want."

"Is he wrong?"

"There is no way of telling," Kerrass said. "He might be, but he might be right on the money. Either way, I don't think there's any harm in us being a bit more careful with our thinking."

"Fuck." I said. "We are still here to talk to The Schattenmann though," I said. "That's the aim here. That's the mission."

"Yeah." Kerrass said. "Yes, it is. I think, that we passed the point of no return now. All we can do really is play the game and hope that our luck holds. Not gonna like it though Freddie. I don't think we have a great deal of luck left."

"Something to pray for," I told him.

We slept.

I dreamed. And they were not nice dreams. I was in the clearing again but far from the sense of peace and tranquillity that had defined those dreams in the past. Instead, I was afraid.

I was in the centre of a firestorm. The trees all around me were on fire and their heat scorched my skin and burnt my lungs as I tried to breathe. The smoke ticked my throat and made me cough which, in turn, made me try to breathe deeply.

I was low down to the ground which is where the cleaner air was. I could not see Kerrass, nor could I much of anything. I knew that I was surrounded by fire and that there was no way out. I could hear animals screaming in the trees on either side as the flames reached their own hiding holes. I looked for our water bottles in an effort to douse my own blankets and pull them over my head in a, probably vain, effort to keep myself alive as the fire would inevitably wash over me. It was a vain hope. I could not find them. I was lost, disoriented and I had no idea where the water was or even if it was remotely reachable.

And I was bound. Ropes of thorny vines tied my hands behind my back and my ankles and knees together. I was trussed as if I was some kind of animal being prepared for the roasting pit. There was a gag in my mouth and I could not breathe. I was so very scared and I looked up and I saw my captor and my tormentor.

I was, after all, not alone in the clearing.

He was immense, tall and heavily muscled. He was naked and wreathed in a fire that seemed to be fuelled by the hate and the rage in his eyes. He moved through the smoke and the fire as though it did not bother him and was not painful. He stood there and looked down at me as his form was wrapped around in the smoke and the flame. In the dream, I recognised him and I called out his name although now, I have no idea who's name it was that I called out.

I pleaded with him. I begged him to release me and to let me go. I told him that I was afraid and that I was sorry and that I had made an awful mistake. Over and over again I begged him and I promised that I would not transgress again. I told him that I would be good and that he would not need to punish me. That I had learned my lesson.

He just stared down at me, the smoke and the fire wrapping around him, obscuring his face and his form. But I maintain that I knew who he was.

The flame finally passed over me and burned the clothing from my body but did not seem to touch the vines that kept my limbs confined. Still, I could not move and as the agony washed over me I sobbed. Still pleading for mercy but the flames were uncompromising in their disdain for anything so normal and boring as pity.

And I just wept with the pain of it as I burned front he inside out. I should have died. From the flames and the heat and the horror, I should have died. But I did not. Instead, I sobbed and I pleaded as my eyes melted and my hair burned. As my insides baked and before my nose blistered, I could smell my own flesh burning.

I woke in the middle of the night. I knew that it was nighttime because it was dark and Kerrass was shaking me.

"Come on Freddie, It is time to go."

"But it's still dark out… side."

"I know Freddie. But it is morning and it is time that we were on our way."

I just looked at him. The dream was still strong in my mind and in my reflexes. I wanted to sleep, I wanted some real rest and my mind was teetering on the edge of madness and I sobbed.

I could no longer remember the name of the figure that I had seen in my dream even though the memory of him standing tall and muscled over me as he looked down and judged me.

I felt the flames on my body still and I opened my mouth to scream and no sound came out.

Kerrass swore and held onto me tightly. I have what happened next from his words as I spent a bit of time not being entirely in control of my senses.

Stefan came to see what was keeping us and saw Kerrass doing his best to comfort me. Stefan was compassionate about it, even though he was not entirely understanding. He had known about my period of sickness after all but had been unaware of just how badly I was affected by it. He had kind of assumed that it was just something that I could throw off or otherwise ignore or move past. He said something stupid like "it was just a nightmare, everyone gets nightmares before Kerrass essentially told him that I, Freddie, didn't have nightmares like other people.

To be fair to Stefan, it would seem that he took the point almost immediately and apologised, realising that he did not understand and went off to tell the dryads about the problem.

Oak-Leaf was more understanding, but not by a great deal. She wondered why I couldn't just snap out of things and told Kerrass that it was just a bad dream. Kerrass recounted this particular piece of conversation.

"Freddie has bad dreams as you or I do." He told her. "Then he has nightmares, again like you or I do where he gets up and has to spend some time reasserting where he is and what is going on in the world. But then he has these kinds of nightmares. And if you haven't had one… I don't know what to tell you. They are like nothing you have ever experienced or will again. Yes, I have them. But it's not just a nightmare. When you wake up from a nightmare, you might need to take a bit of time to wake up and properly make sure that it was just a dream. You relieve yourself and have something to drink before climbing back to bed.

"Freddie has one of these nightmares and then he is incoherent. Life is a nightmare to him and he is convinced that the dream was real. He is scared, to this day, that his day to day life is a dream and that the nightmare is real. And sometimes, if his brain is really trying to kill him. He wonders if he is yet to wake up."

She didn't take that well. Come to think of it, it's entirely possible that Stefan handled all of this better than she did.

"We need to move." She told him. "We need to get back underway because if we don't then we won't make it and if we don't make it then the consequences could be catastrophic. Can you… I don't know… slap him awake or something."

Kerrass claimed that he ignored that suggestion and ignored her until she came back with a different suggestion. Which turned out to be a sedative of some kind. Apparently, the healer was a lot more sympathetic and understanding than she was.

It took me longer than I would like to come back to my senses. But I got there in the end. I climbed to my feet and pulled my pack onto my shoulders. I took my spear in hand and marched towards the entrance to the cave before someone stopped me. Kerrass joined me and Stefan wasn't far behind him.

Stefan clapped me on the shoulder.

Oak-Leaf was saying goodbye. There were three women coming with the three of us. Oak-Leaf and two others whose names I either never knew or have forgotten with all the problems that come with trying to learn the names of the dryads of the Black Forest.

To my eye, Oak-Leaf was the youngest of the trio. The other two were older women that, if they were human, I would have put somewhere in their late forties or beginning of their fifties. They were still strong, hale, hearty and beautiful in the ways that dryads are always beautiful. They were younger than the old Attendant that Chestnut-Shell introduced me to. They had grey and silver streaks in their hair and there was a certain added leanness to their limbs and muscles that comes with age. The pair of them joined the three of us at the gates while the other, eight or so dryads were pleading with Oak-Leaf that she didn't need to go.

She embraced one of them before she spoke at a certain amount of length. I didn't catch all of it because I was… essentially… a little bit high. Arachas poison, plus antidote, plus whatever sedative they had given me conspired in my bloodstream to make that kind of thing happen. But I remember this.

Full disclaimer. It is entirely possible, thinking of my mental state at the time, that I only heard snippets and that later events left me plugging in things that make sense.

"I have to go." She said. "I knew that this was my time when I departed from the village and recent events have confirmed it. Yes, I am young to make this final journey but I feel called to it and I am not afraid. I will submit myself to The Schattenmann's judgement and if he is displeased with me then I will bear his wrath as best as I am able. I will tell him that the fault is not yours, nor any other dryads. I shall tell him that the fault was mine and that I could have done better to protect the people of his forest.

"If I should die, then another will be chosen. I trust that, if only in my memory. You will treat this new leader with the respect and the love that you have treated me. Welcome her for she will be very afraid. Do not let her rush to her end. The Schattenmann will have chosen her for a reason and she must take the time to understand that reason and get used to it.

"Do not be angry with the men. They do not know what they do. They too are lost and afraid. Farewell."

She picked up her belongings and led us out into the darkness.

The three dryads, including her, carried no packs, no burdens. No blankets and only a few little supplies. They had a water bottle each and a few snacks but other than their weapons. There was nothing else that they had on them. Oak-Leaf looked a little beaten down but the other two, who both hugged her when she joined us, seemed to lose their age as they left the cave. As though all of the cares of the world had been lifted from their shoulders.

Oak-Leaf led with, I guessed, the oldest of the three dryads following. Then came Stefan before I followed with Kerrass walking near me or as close as he could given the terrain in case I faltered. The last dryad followed behind.

I felt oddly peaceful. The way I sometimes do after I've been ill for a while. My mind was calm and determined. I was tired, I don't think there was a way that I could get around that. I was tired and in no small amount of pain. But I was determined and as I set out, I grit my teeth together to force one foot in front of another.

"I don't think we have much choice here. If attacked, defend yourselves and each other. We're going to need to work as a team." Oak-Leaf told us.

The three humans nodded.

"I am Cherry-Blossom." One of the other dryads introduced herself with the smile of a warrior that is going to relish the coming fight. She was a big woman, muscled and hard. She had an easy feeling and confidence in movement that I found reassuring. She carried a spear and a shield along with a large bow, several large canvas, reinforced boxes of arrows and another quiver of arrows that was strapped for ease of access. The arrow boxes reminded me again of the bastards and their arrow bags. Even more parallels to journeys in the North. "And yes that is my name and don't mock me for it. It does not make me any sweeter." She grinned as she said it.

I offered my hand and she shook it firmly.

"Looking forward to working with you Witcher." She told Kerrass when they shook hands. "I was only young the last time a Witcher came through."

She shook Stefan's hand and if there was any leftover animosity there, I couldn't tell.

"I am Willow-Root." The other dryad said. She was tall and graceful. Of the two other dryads, she was the oldest and had the most grey in her hair. Her limbs were lean rather than built with the veins standing clear under the skin. She had nothing more to say as she shook our hands and although determined, her eyes seemed calm and serene.

"How do the three of you fight?" Cherry-Blossom asked.

"Against monsters?" Kerrass wondered.

"To you and your thinking?" Oak-Leaf said. "That is what we will be fighting."

"Then I am the anchor but I move fast and acrobatically. I would suggest that we use my silver and I as the centre of a formation. Freddie knows how to watch my back and he should be with me."

"Will he be up to it?" Willow-Root wondered. "No offence human but you look tired and not much like a warrior."

"You would be surprised," Oak-Leaf said. "He defeated Sun-Flower in single combat."

The two older dryads looked at me in surprise.

"Freddie has fought against bigger threats while feeling worse," Kerrass told them. "He will be fine. Stefan picks off stragglers while the three of you find shooting situations and pick off stragglers, drive them off or towards my silver."

The three exchanged glances before nodding.

"How far do we have to go today?" Kerrass wondered.

"Depending on other factors, it's a four to six-hour careful march. Not far, but not a small distance either."

Kerrass nodded and looked at me. I shrugged and Stefan nodded in turn. Oak-Leaf turned and led us out of the cave.

We moved past the gate and into the false darkness that was outside.

And it was a false darkness. It was like an eclipse. It was as though there was something in front of the light that was just keeping us from being able to see properly. I didn't get to confer on this with Kerrass or ther others. But that was what it felt like to me. When I was outside and staring up through the trees, I could see that there was sunlight above me, trying to get through the cracks in the canopy overhead.

But every time that I thought I should be walking through a sunbeam, it was as though something obscured the light and a shadow covered my sight. I have no idea what that shadow was, or what cast that shadow. But it was a shadow. Very early on in this, final stage of the journey to see the Schattenmann, I remember stopping to look up and try and catch some sight of the sun. To try and see what was actually happening up there. I saw where the light should be and then I saw the shadow covering it and I remember laughing. Stefan looked back at me as he realised I was laughing and that we had fallen behind. A look of concern and worry crossed his eyes and I grinned at him.

"The man of shadows." I said, gritting my teeth and jogging to catch up.

I realise that I am not really describing this properly. The effect is really easier in describing what things were not like. It was not like smoke obscuring the sun. When smoke covers light, it can lend a haziness quality to the light but that wasn't what was happening here. There was more solid quality. It faded in and out. It was like someone was moving a hand in front of the light source, waving it backwards and forwards so that the light seemed to wink in and out.

I should also be clear that I could still see. There was enough light to see. But the shadows would lengthen and move in strange and off-putting ways that were hard to follow.

It was also as though the light itself was moving. I remembered that someone, probably Chestnut-Shell, had made the point that the Schattenmann actually loved the light as he was made out of Shadow. And that the shadow cannot exist without the light. As we jogged through the undergrowth, I remember suddenly wondering if the Schattenmann had any control over the light as well.

Then I laughed again. Of course he did. Shadow has power over light by being able to obscure it. I laughed again at my own stupidity and we ran on.

Kerrass and I were working together well. It really was like running through the forests of Northern Redania again only this time, I was the weaker of the two of us. Kerrass knew what he was doing, regularly stopping to make sure I was alright, giving a word of encouragement or hurling a small, needling insult in order to get me going again.

Stefan was openly enjoying himself. This was the kind of thing he had expected and he said so. There was darkness on either side of us. Monsters attacking, enemies in front of us, behind us and on either side. He was with strong companions and there were people to protect.

I could relate to how he felt. There were no ambiguities here. A simple task for the six of us to get to the heart of the Forest. Nothing more to it and nothing less to it.

It was tough going but go we went.

I remembered a sense that the world was out to get me. It was oddly familiar. I remember the headlong rush of Northern Redania and gritted my teeth. But that wasn't what was happening today.

We moved quickly and carefully. Oak-Leaf led us while Cherry-Blossom was with her. The two would advance. One led while the other covered with a bow. It reminded me of how the bastards had worked together. The parallels between this and the time in the North continued.

They would advance to a place of safety and then signal, the three humans would jog up to the new place of safety before Willow-Root would run to catch up after she had guarded our backs. I found it a very stop-start kind of movement. At the same time slower but also much faster than the previous march. Having said that, far easier to keep my breath.

The first attack happened a little time into the journey. It was impossible to tell how far we had come given the nature of the movement. But the scouts were in their position and the three of us were moving forwards.

"Beware right," Willow-Root called.

I heard a Bow-String sing and something shrieked as an arrow hit home. I spun, spear up. I saw movement in the undergrowth and I fell into a spear crouch. It was not my cleanest ever monster kill but I have done worse as the Endrega leapt at me, intending to wrap me up in its legs and bring me to the ground. In doing so it all but impaled itself on the spear. I reacted automatically, twisting the spear to ensure the kill and free the blade before using my foot to push the beast off the end.

Another bow sang and something else chittered in the insectoid version of agony. Kerrass had his blade out and it was swinging. One Endrega leapt and an upright stroke cut the legs ff the right-hand side of its body away, sending them spinning through the air. He turned in place to avoid the onrushing charge of a second, larger Endrega and used the turn to add momentum to a downward strike that cut a third Endrega down through the tail.

The larger Endrega landed and was looking for a new target. Stefan was engaging another pair and his back was unprotected. I leapt forward just as an arrow struck the soldier caste Endrega in the side, it staggered and I thrust my spear in near the arrow. The force of my strike and the beast shrinking from the agony of my blow tipped the beast over onto its side.

"Down," Kerrass yelled. When he does that, training tells me that I need to pay attention and I dropped. An Endrega leapt over me. I rolled and found myself next to Stefan who swung with his own blade, all but batting the attacker away from us. I saw another target beyond him and lunged. Kerrass joined us before turning and sending a wave of sparks back the way that we had come, driving the insects back.

Willow Root was coming now, Oak-Leaf and Cherry-Blossom were shooting the insects that were running towards her but even the best archers can only shoot so quickly and she was going to be overwhelmed.

"Freddie," Kerrass called and leapt to meet the insects attacking her, his sword spinning.

I leapt after him automatically, an arrow shot over me, close enough that I felt the wind of its passage.

Kerrass and I have fought together for a long time now and I know what he wants me to do without him having to say. He moved into the tide of smaller insects, spinning like a small whirlwind, blade flashing. There was a bigger one lumbering up behind Willow-Root where I ran in and drove the blade of my spear into the join between it's legs. I struck, twisted and lifted.

Willow-Root stopped to help me but I waved her towards where the other two dryads were still shooting into the swarm.

"We need your bow, not your spear," I screamed as I tore my own spear free and crouched to meet the next big bug that was charging toward us.

She went, I killed and I was clear. Stefan was below a huge root that was elevated off the ground. He had plunged his sword into the ground and was lifting Willow-Root up onto the root to join Oak-Leaf and CHerry-Blossom that were already up there and shooting, before he turned, pulled the sword from the ground and shouted. "We're clear."

I looked to Kerrass who was still swinging. I saw an Endrega coming found him and stabbed it in the back. I didn't think there was much honour to be gained in fighting Endrega fair.

As there is sometimes in these things, there was a lull, Kerrass caught my eye and nodded to me. I fell back to where Stefan waited while Kerrass retreated a bit more cautiously.

An Endrega leapt at me, only to be snatched out of the air by an arrow. Another came and I swung blindly, I felt my blade connect and bite. I reached Stefan who stepped past me and hacked down a chasing beast.

I leapt, Cherry-Blossom caught my hand and pulled me to safety. An Endrega tried to climb the branch and I stabbed down, shearing a few legs off the side of the thing before it fell, only to be impaled on Stefan's sword.

"KERRASS," I bellowed, he heard and sending a wave of flame behind him, he sprinted back towards us and joined Stefan, fighting at the base of our safety. I stabbed those trying to climb up the root while the dryads continued to shoot with their frightening accuracy.

And then it was over. Stefan and Kerrass joined us on the root while we took it in. The fight had not lasted much more than a few minutes and we had killed an uncounted number of Endregas.

We waited until the undergrowth stopped rustling. Kerrass took hold of his amulet for a moment and nodded.

"We're clear." He said.

Oak-Leaf nodded. "Let's recover as many arrows as we can," she said, it looks like we will need them. Well fought everyone and scholar?"

"Hmm?" I straightened from where I had been breathing heavily.

"Well fought. Better fought than I expected." She took a breath, "I apologise for underestimating you."

I shrugged. "Happens all the time," I told her, "often to my benefit as well." She saw the joke before she grinned and jumped down and got to work next to Cherry-Blossom.

"Thank you," Willow-Root said to me. "You saved my life I think."

I grinned at her and took the offered hand while I massaged my aching and still injured leg with the other. "I have no doubt that you will be able to repay the favour before we get where we're going."

She laughed at that.

"Stand lookout." She told Kerrass who nodded before she leapt down to do her own arrow collections.

They could not recover many, hard insect shells will do that.

"Good job I brought plenty," Cherry-Blossom said grimly as she passed out some of the spare arrows from the arrow bags she carried.

That was the way that it went. Some of the fighting was less interesting. We were charged by a pair of werewolves that I was not expecting to have to face in the middle of the forest. I had kind of always assumed that such things would be more centred in the outskirts with the villagers and the rest. But no…

We were alerted by their howling and Kerrass audibly sighed. He pulled a bottle from his pack and soaked a rag in it before thoroughly wiping his silver blade with it before tossing the rag to me and I did the same, then I passed it onto Stefan and warned him to clean his blade thoroughly afterwards. We didn't even need to discuss how we were going to deal with the attack.

Werewolves are still people after all, somewhere deep down and to varying standards of consciousness and capabilities. Some are more animal than man it is true and some others are more human. But even the most animal beasts that I have come across take some time to psyche themselves up to it.

The dryads moved up into some nearby trees. Kerrass placed himself to the right of the three of us while Stefan was on my right. The werewolves charged, the dryads fired and caused them to dodge around. Kerrass attacked the first to reach us while Stefan and I delayed the second. It became frustrated and howled which resonated in Stefan's helmet a bit to make him uncomfortable. The werewolf saw the weakness and attacked, giving me a prime shot at the beast's back and I took advantage of it.

All Kerrass had to do was to come and finish it off.

We were also attacked by a pack of wolves led by a bear of all things. That was an odd experience. Contrary to what you might have heard, Wolves tend not to attack people unless starving and the human is weakened. This is not because they won't attack humans but because more often than not, there is easier prey out there. Humans do things like shoot and fight back rather than flee.

The dryads mostly dealt with that one. The three melee fighters formed the points of a triangle to fend the wolves off while the dryads stood in the middle and just shot the wolves down until they fled. The formation broke once when the bear charged but he was so full of arrows when our formation broke that Stefan, who was closest, barely had to swing his sword to put the poor beast out of his misery.

That fight was actually quite unpleasant. Not because we were hurt or because it was difficult. But because it was so mundane. You don't think about beasts attacking you and the dryads wept as they fired. Their arrows were no less accurate for their pain though.

We took a break mid-morning. Oak-Leaf led us to another tree platform where we took some time to take stock. Honestly speaking, I would rather have kept going as climbing up to the platform was harder work than running and fighting through the undergrowth. But we had to drink some water and have a small snack to keep our energy up.

"I have a question." Stefan wondered as he tightened a strap on his armour that had come loose.

I stifled a groan as I was expecting Stefan to shatter the careful Camaraderie that we had been building together under combat. But I was wrong and Stefan deserved better than my automatic condemnation and suspicion.

"The Schattenmann wants us to get to the heart of the Forest, right? I mean that's the point of this entire thing."

"That's right," Oak-Leaf said. She was straightening some arrows in order to make them more useful. Apparently, you can do that and it is one of the ways that you can salvage broken arrows. It seems strange that that might be a thing to me but… there you go. It works, it must do because the dryads continued to be frighteningly accurate.

"Also," Stefan went on. "The Schattenmann controls these monsters right?"

Oak-Leaf shrugged and gestured to Cherry-Blossom who was working on another set of arrows. The three women seemed to have some kind of assembly line system going on.

"Kind of," Cherry Blossom said as she took the thread that she was using to tighten the fletchings onto an arrow, out of her teeth. "He exerts some element of control certainly. But how much control he has, or how much influence he exerts, are a matter for some debate."

"Huh," Stefan said. "So here's my question. If he wants us there, even if it's to chastise me for being a stupid human and killing his Arachas. If he wants us there, why is he sending all these monsters after us? Surely the best and most efficient way of dealing with this is to part the sea so to speak and let us get on with it?"

Kerrass and I looked at each other. It was not a bad question after all.

"There are three things," Cherry-Blossom began. "The first is that this is almost a religious thing for us. The trial of the journey is part of the point."

"Ok?" Stefan prompted.

"The second thing is that 'monsters' as you call them, are here for a reason. They are the defences that defend the heart of the Forest more than we do and more than anything else does. We don't know why he doesn't entirely trust us but we do know that the last path, of course, is the monsters. They are protecting him and there is more than a small possibility that they are simply obeying their primal instinct."

"Right," Stefan agreed. "And what's the third thing?"

"You are assuming that the Schattenmann thinks the same way you or I do."

Stefan stared at her for a long moment before he laughed. I got the feeling that there had been a watershed moment passed there. And every so often after we had descended from the platform, he would stop and chuckle to himself for a moment.

There was a long break between attacks after that. I don't know who was in charge of the tactics of the monsters and I don't know if they were trying to tempt us into making a headlong dash of it and lose our caution. I certainly felt that temptation but am experienced enough now to know just how foolish that temptation is. Certainly, no one tried to suggest that we try to make up some lost ground and we kept working as we did.

Which was when we were swamped by some arachnomorphs.

I hate Arachnomorphs. I might have said before that I struggle with no small amount of Arachnophobia. It is a source of much amusement by Kerrass that I am marrying someone who once held the nickname of "Spider-Queen." Being around Fluffy and some of the other more domesticated giant Spiders that Ariadne makes use of in her estates has robbed me of some of these fears. (Tom, Dick and Harry are their names. They have been trained to behave as footmen, it's quite funny to watch other people, especially critics of Ariadne, go kind of pale when served wine by a giant spider wearing a hat and a cravat. She had to draw the line at making them wear an apron or maid's outfit though.)

But for all of my lessening Arachnophobia, I still hate Arachnomorphs. There is a difference, it is about the segmentation of the bodies and somehow that makes them more sinewy and I hate that. I hate the way they can jump and ball up their webs and throw them at you in order to catch you.

You don't know it reader but I have just shuddered.

It was not a particularly difficult fight. All I really had to do was to swing my spear and I would hit something in the seething mass. But I hate Arachnomorphs. In the end, Kerrass drove them back by just sending wave after wave of Sparks into them which burnt all their webs thus removing their advantage.

It's a good strategy in general. If you do find yourself being attacked by Arachnopmorphs, then remember a few things. Arachnomorphs are cowards and will run away from you if they find you too scary. But if one leaps backwards and it's facing you, it is drawing you in so that others can attack you. When you know that you are in Arachnomorph territory. Make a point of checking your campsite for a silvery sheen to the ground. These webs are telltale signs. Burn them. And the smell of burning webs leaves an acrid, unpleasant taste in the air. Like hot metal.

And my last piece of advice about fighting Arachnomorphs or going into an area where you know that Arachnomorphs are present? Keep a very sharp knife close to your hand so that you can reach it with your hands, even if your hands are bound. Then get comfortable with the thought of slitting your own arteries at your wrists or your groin. Do not, under any circumstances, allow yourself to be taken alive by an Arachnomorph. When the phrase 'a fate worse than death' was invented. They were talking about death by Arachnomorph.

Another fight was against another mass of Endregas. This time it was easier as they didn't quite catch us in quite as disadvantageous position. This time, Oak-Leaf had just set down from our place of safety to begin our next series of movements and Kerrass' head jerked up.

"BACK," He shouted. By this point, the other dryads had learned to listen to Kerrass when he shouts warnings. An Endrega warrior leapt at Oak-Leaf as she fled, two arrows flashed into the leaping beast and it fell backwards, its legs curling up underneath it.

We did not fare so well against a pair of Vampires. We had enough time for Kerrass to shout a warning as these two immense… things dropped down from on high. They were tall, monstrously muscled and had semi-batlike wings. I've since learned that they are not as skilled at flying but that they can use them for gliding. They leap with powerful leg muscles and then glide huge distances.

They landed and we were warned by Kerrass so that we scattered, and then they screamed. It was an assault on our ears that left us staggering and dizzy but also robbed us of our ability to communicate with each other. So instead, as well as staggering around, rubbery limbed and stumbling, we were unable to shout warnings and look out for one another. Despite their huge mass, the Fleders were fast. Very fast indeed. Fortunately, Fleders are not the most intelligent of the Vampire breeds. Kerrass who had some experience in these matters was able to distract them, scatter them and take them down. But we were not without injury. None of us emerged unscathed from that one. I came out of it quite well with a gash down my arm and another on my face. Neither was deep as I was aware of just how fast the Fleders could be.

Stefan was hurt and his armour was damaged. He had taken a big blow which his armour saved him from feeling the bite of the beast's claws. But the sheer impact alone had meant that he had been sent flying through the air to impact a tree. So his breast plate was ruined and he had a cracked rib.

Kerrass was the worst with multiple gashes all over his body although he had the benefit of being able to take a Witcher's potion which healed him almost straight away. The damage to his armour was telling though.

Oak-Leaf had an incidental injury where she had pulled a muscle to get out of the way, but both Cherry-Blossom and Willow-Root had bad gashes.

So for the first time in a while, I became the group surgeon.

The hardest part was pulling Stefan's armour off. The denting meant that the hinges and things were all mangled together so that Kerrass and I between us had to pull it off him. It was not easy and the process looked… rather painful all things considered. Then it was just a case of strapping him up and putting his chainmail back on. The plate was useless and we just left it there.

The dryads needed some stitching up. They had a herbal wash to clean the injuries which stung before leaving the cuts feeling warm then cold, then hot again before settling down, leaving me with the oldest injury heal in the world of stitching people back up. Oak-Leaf and Willow-Root took it all in silence but Cherry-Blossom joked with me.

"Have you done much in the way of field surgery?" She wondered.

"More than I would like?" I told her.

"Did you never consider a career in it?"

"I did at one point?" I admitted, "but the girl broke my heart and I had to leave."

She laughed. "You do it well. It always seemed a bit complicated to me."

"There's not much to it in all truth," I told her. "The long and short of it is that the Blood has to stay on the inside."

She laughed again.

After what passed for our attempt at lunch. I say attempt because, what with all of the adrenaline and things that were flushing through our systems, it was nearly impossible to keep any actual food down.

Oh and by the way, when people tell you that they find it difficult to eat after a fight, this is why. It is also why you put the sustenance in them and stand over them until they start to actually eat the stuff. The body needs fuel after a fight on, oh so many levels.

But we choked some stuff down and drank some of the pure water that was left. The dryads told us that there was no need to preserve supplies. It was, at the same time, kind of reassuring, but also deeply sinister and Stefan was not the only person to wonder what would need to happen for the return journey.

But we pulled ourselves to our feet, adjusted some of the straps on the packs and put our best foot forward. The afternoon was not as tough. I don't know why and I don't know if it just seemed to be not as tough. After the morning's trials, we moved and worked together like a practised unit. I suppose that in that kind of a situation, it is the same thing as throwing someone into the deep part of a pond, they either sink or learn to swim. We had a rhythm now and we became really really good at it.

We were attacked by enough beasties that I stopped counting. I know that we killed two Arachas, uncountable numbers of Endrega and Arachnomorph. Some Kikkimores turned up at one point which the dryads seemed surprised about on the grounds that, apparently, Kikkimores are not too fond of burrowing through root structures. Kerrass agreed but also shrugged at the debate on the grounds that there was so much going on at the Black Forest that didn't make sense from a traditional standpoint and he had stopped worrying about it.

There were also several bears although, after that first attack, we were not attacked by any Wolves. They seemed to be content to keep pace with us, keeping an eye on us and running alongside us. Presumably acting as scouts for some kind of unknown force.

The fights seemed easier somehow. The monsters were less content to press the attack or to really go out of their way to see us dead. They would attack and then when it became clear that they were going to lose, they would flee. There was less… hate about it all now. Almost as if things were resigned to the thought of the fact that we were going to make it through.

After the headlong dash so far, I wondered of Kerrass as to whether we were being herded towards anything.

"Thinking of Redania Freddie?" He wondered.

"You have to agree that there are some startling similarities," I told him. "Woodland, being chased and flanked on either side."

"There are some." He said. "There is a lot that is different though. We are being followed and tracked it is true, but have you noticed that when we stop for a break, they don't attack? They wait for us to start again before following on behind."

"I had not noticed that."

"Also, we are still moving to avoid certain sites. We have passed two Large Endrega nests."

"I had not noticed that either."

"You wouldn't. I have never knowingly taken you into an Endrega nest and if I accidentally realised that I had, I would immediately take you back out of one. The forest is calming down."

"Kerrass, it's been a long time since you got overly cryptic at me. I thought we had gotten out of the habit of doing that kind of thing."

He grinned.

"What do you mean by 'the forest is calming down'?" I demanded when it became clear that he wasn't going to elaborate.

"Can't you feel it? There is not as much darkness. The air has lost its metallic edge to it. The fights are less… angry. The entire feeling of the thing has changed. This is no longer a fight. This is a… This is a test."

"And we are passing it," Oak-Leaf said as she stood up. "Come on, it is time for us to be back under way."

As we had travelled, the ground had been flat for quite some time. Or at least, it had been as flat as the ground gets in ancient and primaeval forest land.

By which I mean, large, interlocking, huge root systems that weave and wrap over each other. Fallen logs, twisted vines and bushes were everywhere. Tumbling rocks and things that have been torn out of the ground and sent rolling down slopes and the like by whatever movement the spilling of the earth caused.

That and, as it turns out, there were burrowing insectoids around the palace that, by their very nature, move the ground around and make it more difficult to walk in a straight line from point A to point B.

For all of that though, the ground had been relatively flat as we had travelled over that last day. Immediately after descending from the dryad village, the ground had been sloping downwards for that first day but over the course of that day and into the second day, the slope had been lessening until we had gotten to the stage where we were essentially walking along the flat. And on that last day, the ground had been much flatter even to the point that I had almost forgotten the slope. But now, it felt as though we were beginning to climb up again.

The last attack was by a Leshen. It had been big and impressive and we had cut chunks off it between us. It was accompanied by a small pack of wolves but its favourite tactic was to turn into a large flock of crows before flying around us, trying to peck at exposed bits of flesh. This had been a mistake as then the archers could pick off particularly big targets.

Now that Kerrass had told me about it, I could more easily see that the attackers didn't really have their hearts in it. They were still attacking and if we hadn't been paying attention, they would still have torn strips from us. But by the same virtue, they were not pressing home the attack. There were a couple of instances where one or other of us were exposed and the minions of the Leshen could have done some serious damage to us but they didn't really press the advantage home. We kind of danced around each other a bit. A few birds fell, a few wolves were injured with one of them dying and the Leshen had some bits of itself cut off. But then it just seemed to spontaneously decide that we weren't worth the effort, transformed itself into a flock of birds and flew off.

We pulled ourselves back together and then moved off a little way until Kerrass declared that we were safe.

To this day, I have no idea what goes into the decision-making process that states whether or not we are safe, but in short, Kerrass has never been wrong on that score.

We gathered in a small circle and took a deep breath. Willow Root passed out the last of the water and handed out the last of the sweet bread that seemed to take the place of trail rations. She just dumped the ration bag and the now-empty waterskin into the undergrowth. Out of curiosity, I had a look around to see if there were any other remnants of other expeditions nearby and I couldn't find any of them.

We drank our water and ate our cake before I realised that Oak-Leaf had tears streaming down her face. I was about to approach her when Cherry-Blossom beat me to it and took the younger woman in her arms.

It looked like a private moment between the two and I didn't want to intrude so I turned to move away.

"I'm scared." I heard Oak-Leaf sob while Cherry-Blossom made soothing noises.

I went to Willow-root who was watching the other two dryads with a certain haunted expression.

"I take it that we are approaching the end of the journey?" I wondered, deliberately not looking at the two upset dryads.

Willow-Root just nodded.

When I walked up to Willow-Root, I had a thousand questions in my mind about what was going to happen, when and what for. But for the right there and right then of the thing. All of those thoughts just left my mind and I stood, staring out into the trees.

"Right," Oak-Leaf said. "This is it, let's not keep the Schattenmann waiting. Let's finish this off."

"Is there far to go?" Stefan wanted to know. "And are we likely to get attacked between here and there?"

"No, and let's find out." She told him before leading us back onto the path.

Kerrass came up next to me. "Are you ok Freddie? You look like you've seen a ghost. And I know what you look like when you've seen a ghost so… Have you seen a ghost?"

I considered his comment for a long moment. "Something dark is about to happen here Kerrass. I don't know what it is but something unpleasant is going to happen."

Kerrass nodded and moved ahead of me. I spent the last… mile or so focused on watching his swords swinging from side to side and paying attention to any sounds coming from the undergrowth. But all truth be told, I was no longer that worried. Not about that anyway.

We didn't have long to wait in all honesty. The ground seemed to slope up again for a long while before we came over another small ridge line and went back down into a bowl.

I stood on that ridgeline for far too long. Long enough that Stefan had to prompt me into moving again.

At the base of the bowl was a huge boulder that had been sunk deep into the ground. I could still see the curve of some of the under parts of the rock. It was not round but it was kind of bulbous and, well, rocky. It seemed to glitter in what light there was that was spilling through the canopy above us and in the reflection of all of the bowls of white light that had been placed around the rock. When I looked closer, it looked as though the boulder was veined through with something and it was this that seemed to shine and reflect the light. It was as though this reflective stuff was covered in a shell of whiteish, grey stone that was crumbling away.

And when I say that the rock was a boulder, I don't think you quite get the sheer scope of the thing. Saying that it was huge was an understatement. I don't think It would have taken a full day to walk around it, but it would have been the kind of walk where you would have needed to stop for a rest in the middle of it.

And it was not the rock that drew the eye.

Out of the top of the boulder had sprouted a tree. Huge and black of bark. It seemed to have grown out of the top of the boulder but then its roots had spilled down the sides of the rock until they had found the ground and buried their way through the top layers of soil and into the earth beneath them. The base of the tree was easily as wide as the rock itself before the base tapered into the main trunk of the tree which was large and gnarled. It was twisted and shaped like those oldest trees that villages do not dare cut down for fear that the village spirits would be displeased if the tree was disturbed.

Never mock those traditions. They are traditions for a reason.

The tree grew huge after that, towering above us as we descended into the bowl. Someone had told me that we were already walking under the eaves of the heart of the forest when we were inside the dryad village and I had felt a little disdainful of the matter at the time. But now that I was here and looking up at it. I found that I was no longer as sceptical.

The trunk of the tree was black and the leaves were various shades of red, making them stand out against the otherwise green leaves of the forest.

It was so big that it literally took my breath away. I wanted to weep. I wanted to fall to my knees. It was so big that my mind was struggling to comprehend it. It was so big that I wanted to look away. It was unfeasible that a tree, a simple tree, could be as big as this one was.

There are times in your life when something happens that makes you realise how utterly insignificant you are. When you stand and look at a mountain while you are still at the foot of it, is one of them. You can stand there and realise that that mountain was there long before you arrived in the world and will be there long after you are dead.

I get the same kind of feeling when I stand in old ruins, some of whom are less than a hundred years old and will have been active in my Grandfather's time if not my Father's time. It is sobering, it is terrifying that everything we build can be gone so that our children or even our Grandchildren will have forgotten about it after we have died.

I have wandered the halls of Coulthard castle and thought about what it will look like in the time of my children. It was already falling into ruin when Father bought it and moved us all in there and it is only because he invested a huge sum of money in it that it is in the state that it's in now. What will happen when Sam or Sam's children decide that they want comfort instead of military outpost style austerity. What will happen if the family moves into the residence in Novigrad on a more permanent basis? What will happen if Sam decides that he doesn't want to live in Coulthard castle at all and prefers the remote, wilder place of Kalayn castle because it is his rather than our Fathers?

What happens when it is decided that the military fortifications of Coulthard castle become obsolete. There are already innovations that suggest that high castle walls are not going to be as beneficial for much longer as siege weapons are becoming more and more powerful?

These are the questions that plague me sometimes and it was the same as I looked up at this huge tree before me. I looked at it and I wondered how long it had taken to grow, how long it had been here. It had certainly been here since long before the Conjunction of the spheres. Long before humans had arrived in this part of the world. I felt impossibly young, stupid and insignificant when I stood there, staring up at the immensity of it.

Kerrass had to shake me free of those thoughts. He is not as sentimental about such things. He has the ability to set such things aside in his mind and not pay attention to them. They are there if he feels as though he wants to take them out and look at them, but otherwise, he can just roll through life. I have wondered if he is this way because of his lifestyle or because of his age.

But he shook me free of those thoughts and we started to climb down the slope. Looking at the circle formed by the ridge surrounding the base of the tree was almost as bad as looking up at the tree itself. There were huge bowls of light that surrounded the base of the tree. Not just at the compass points but all around the place. The bowls themselves were huge and the blue-white light that they gave off was immense.

I knew that they were huge because I could see small humanoid figures walking around them and throwing things up into the bowl. As we descended, I saw one of the figures place a ladder up against the lip of the bowl and climb it to pour a skin of something into the bowl.

There were other figures around the place. They wore robes, similar in cut and appearance to the robes of the dryad attendants except these robes were all black. Some of the figures were hooded while others walked around with their hair loose and flowing around their shoulders. This hair was also silver in the light and reflected the light of the bowls, giving them an ethereal look as they moved about, working and praying.

I could see one, largish group standing before the boulder and therefore the tree with their arms reaching up towards it in supplication. Others were sitting on rocks in the centre of what looked to be intricate, twisting patterns that had been drawn in the ground. They were sitting cross-legged with their hands placed in their laps, unmoving and seemingly staring off into space.

It reminded me of a monastery. I have been in a couple now. Every so often, monasteries might provide contracts for Kerrass. Being a central place for the locals to communicate and being at least relatively neutral and trustworthy, if a monster needs killing and all of the locals need to chip in to get it done, then the monastery collects the funds and pays the Witcher.

By this, I mean those kinds of countryside monasteries which have a few dozen monks in them or abbeys that have a similar number of nuns in them. Rather than the larger monasteries in the cities or nearby which is where the really ambitious churchmen live.

I have always found the idea of staying in such places rather appealing although I am forced to admit that I would only last a couple of weeks or so before I would get bored. Then I would want to travel, to see something or spend some time with friends.

But that's what it reminded me of. We climbed down the path and the slope began to flatten out again into a kind of bowl shape.

Cherry-Blossom was walking next to Oak-Leaf now, holding her hand and my sense of foreboding began to grow again after the shock of seeing the huge tree.

We walked down, occasionally having to stop and watch where we were going as we descended but it wouldn't be long before my gaze would, inevitably, once again be drawn by the huge tree that was at the base of the bowl. But then I saw what else was waiting for us at the foot of the slope.

Or rather who.

The Schattenmann was there and to finally see him was to take my breath away.

He was, at the same time. Far larger and more impressive than I could have imagined. But at the same time, he was kind of underwhelming.

He was still tall and those people that had described him as looking a little like Lesehn were not too far off the mark. If you saw him from a distance then you would certainly be forgiven for thinking that that was the case. He certainly had all the hallmarks of a Leshen. He had a large Stag skull with an equally huge rack of antlers that grew out of the top of the skull. I couldn't count the number of points on the skull due to movement but it was enough that I had to give up. Suffice to say that if Father had brought down a stag like that, he would have been nervous about having it stuffed and mounted for fear that people would claim that he faked it.

Another similarity that was between him and the average Leshen was that his limbs seemed to be made out of vines, branches and roots. They seemed to twist together and ripple over his limbs, sprouting up and over his head and down his back. It was this that made counting the horns of the deer skull difficult.

Where he started to look different to a Leshen was that there was more… I want to say "substance" to him. When Leshen present themselves, they look like a cluster of branches and roots. Killing them is a matter of hacking away at the wood until eventually, he just splinters and collapses to the ground. But as I said earlier, if a Leshen stood still and allowed you to do it, you could push your sword through the gaps in the thing's body. You would not be able to do that with the Schattenmann. There was something there, even if I couldn't see what it was.

He also gave the impression of a bulky, heavily muscled man. There was a deliberation to his movements, a heaviness to him that you only get out of people that are hugely strong. He reminded me of a Blacksmith or a Woodcutter in that way.

And he was clothed in darkness. Literally, it was as though he was wearing a robe of it. The surrounding area had lots of flickering shadows moving around the place. The light from the bowls was not a steady glow, it did give off a feeling of flickering flame so a lot of the ground was shadowed. And although I could see the ground clearly, there was also a feeling that he had kind of grown out of that shadow.

The thing that most shocked me about it all was… He just wasn't that scary.

Kerrass has a saying that he occasionally uses to explain this kind of thing. There's a series of them which boil down to, 'if we can see it, we can hit it. If we can hit it, we can make it bleed, and if we can make it bleed, we can make it bleed more. And if we can make it bleed a lot, then we can kill it.'

And yes, I know that there is a simpler version of that, but Kerrass has found that the simplification is simply not true. If it bleeds, it does not mean that you can kill it, there might even be a lot more work that needs to be done before something can be killed.

But now that we could see it, it was not actually that scary anymore. There was something that we could hit and exert ourselves against.

When she saw him, Oak-Leaf seemed to square her shoulders a bit, lift her chin up and increased our pace until we were standing before him. Some of the other Black-Robed women started to walk up and surrounded us in a loose ring as the Schattenmann seemed to look down on us from his height of maybe around eight feet.

Ok, he was a bit more frightening now that we were standing there looking up at him.

The Schattenmann said nothing.

We all stood there for a long moment. There was a weight to his gaze that seemed to push down on us for a long while. It was like a physical thing and an effect that is shared by some Kings and priests.

Oak-Leaf stepped forward.

"I am here. It is my fault. I should have been more careful and I should have made sure that they…"

The Schattenmann raised his hand and Oak-Leaf ground to a halt.

The hand was long and formed into gnarled claws at the end of long fingers. The claws seemed to have sharp edges in them and the points of those claws seemed to glitter.

After a long moment, Oak-Leaf seemed to fall in on herself, whatever pride or anger or determination that she was fuelling herself with seemed to leech out of her and she hung her head.

"I'm sorry." She sobbed. "I am so so sorry."

The Scahttenmann seemed to nod with his entire body and held his hands out wide. Oak-Leaf let her weapons fall to the ground and ran into the Schattenmann's embrace as she wept in shame and bitterness. The Schattenmann slowly wrapped his arms around her in an embrace that actually looked quite warm.

Cloaked figures came towards those of us that remained. One picked up Oak-Leaf's weapons and took them off somewhere. Others went to Willow-Root and Cherry-Blossom. Some took away our two companion's weapons while others offered them large, voluminous black robes which they put on.

"Good luck," Willow-Branch told us as she disappeared into the huge hood that the robe had.

Cherry-Blossom said nothing as she vanished into the robe.

Now that I could see better in the gloom, I could see that the robed figures were all dryads of the older variety and as they approached us, they fell into place around the circle.

A couple pushed us back gently but firmly, leaving Oak-Leaf and the Schattenmann together.

Oak-Leaf finally pulled away and nodded before standing alone, looking up into the face of the Schattenmann.

"I am ready." She said.

He put his hand on her shoulder, huge, gnarled and twisted.

She nodded again. "Best to get it done, I am only becoming more afraid otherwise."

The Schattenmann nodded again and let her go.

Then his hand ripped forward and tore Oak-Leaf's belly open spilling her entrails on the ground.

Oak-Leaf groaned. She collapsed onto her knees and almost reflexively tried to keep her guts inside her body.

Kerrass, Stefan and I instinctively jerked forwards but strong dryad hands held us back.

Two cloaked figures ran into the circle and watched Oak-Leaf carefully. At first, I thought they were there to help her. But instead, they watched her as in her agony, she forced her hands to let go of her belly. How she did it with an awful wound like that I will never know. She forced herself to her feet and she began to walk. Tears of pain that I can only imagine spilt from her eyes as she staggered forwards, leaving the entrails in a trail behind her.

I wanted to vomit at the sight, the sounds, the smell and the shock of the injury, but that woman had fought beside me and had probably saved my life. I owed it to her to watch her last moments.

One of the two robed figures examined the ground where the entrails fell while the other watched Oak-Leaf closely. At first, Oak-Leaf walked with a determined stride. She was moving towards the rock and the tree as the crowd parted for her.

Gradually though, her steps turned into staggering, uneven steps. One of her legs stopped working and she was dragging it behind her before eventually, the other gave out too. Black blood splashed dripped on the ground and a smell escaped from her that was utterly horrific. She fell to her knees, unable to keep her legs walking. She looked up at the tree although I could no longer see her face. She leant forward and started to drag herself along the ground. She didn't get very far.

At the last, she rolled over onto her back and just stared up into the canopy of the forest as she died.

It looked, agonizing.

The two robed figures stood together and seemed to have a whispered conversation with each other before going back to the Schattenmann and saying something to him. He nodded and the dryads seemed to start to wander off.

A pair of them bent and carried the dead body away.

I can't speak for Kerrass or Stefan, but I was frozen. I had no idea what to do with myself. Part of me wanted to attack after that brutal, horrible display.

Instead, though I watched as the robed figures, Willow-Root and Cherry Blossom among them, departed leaving us with the Schattenmann. He reached up to the Skull's head and pulled it away from his body.

The shadows started to shrink around him, flowing into the ground. The roots, branches and thorns seemed to dissolve like… well… shadow before candlelight. He seemed to shrink in stature although it was not as though he physically shrunk. It was as though I was looking at him from another angle and I realised that he wasn't as tall as I thought he was.

I finally looked at his face. Straight into the eyes of Henrik who I had last seen having two spears thrust into his guts. He stared at the three of us for a long moment, eyes scanning our features before he nodded, tucking the deer skull under one arm before turning his back to us.

"Follow." He said.

Such was our shock at everything that had happened, that we did precisely that.

(A/N: Thankyou for your patience, the last few weeks have been tough and I have not been very well with the brain weasels. THis chapter was tough and although I think it's pretty good, if a bit patchy, I am glad it's over. I hope you like it. Thanks for reading guys, have as good a time as you can and stay safe out there.)